The Twixters, and Fandom

[nemorathwald]

TIME Magazine's January 2005 cover story is on The Twixters, a new life-phase that's emerging between teenager and adult. Modern educations have ceased to be worth much in the job market, so they can't afford a home, a marriage, or kids. They're renowned as Secret Masters Of Friendship, the "New Tribes."

I don't live with my parents, which would be wrong to them, but as long as I don't have kids or get married, I have no one to be irresponsible to. Why does the transition to so-called "adulthood" create more neediness in this world just in order to level it back out to zero in their lifetimes? If you're worried about being selfish, there's plenty enough pre-existing need to be met without having more kids.

And don't get me started on permanent, institutionalized romantic commitment as a pointless anachronism and "The One and Only True Forever Love" as a hormonally-deluded illusion.

And career? Anything worth loving is worth doing as a labor of love, for free, like open source software. People pay someone else to do the rest, which is called a job.

The article talks about "settling down" as if its value needed no defense whatsoever. What's that, a real-estate ad? The best they could do was question-begging, vague moral tut-tutting and undefined fear. We are expected to follow the railroad tracks of normality "because... uh... hmm... um... Peter Pan!" It should have asked, "why shouldn't everyone be a Twixter?"

Has this resulted in an influx into Fandom, which seems tailor-made for the tribalizing Twixters? Even though I'm 30 and therefore outside the high end of the age range, I am a Twixter and so are my friends. It occurred to me while reading the article that I don't spend time with anyone who has children. At M.O.F.O., I can only think of three couples, and none of them have kids. Is it just me, or do there exist two distinct hermetically-sealed contingents of Fen? I speak of those who have a house, a spouse, a career, and children; and those who have one of the above at most. Never the twain shall meet except at Concom meetings?

Comments

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I like what Eliezer Yudkowski said in The Meaning of Life FAQ. He shows in a logic chart that there must be a potential meaning or meanings to any given life if we will make it, and that each individual's interim meaning of life is to find it. I'll tell you why I like that.

The modern world makes possible a bewildering level of freedom. But many modern people don't have the imagination or drive to do much with that, and spend it watching TV. Some long for the 30-year lifespan of a medieval serf where choices are made for you. They regard options as a temporary journey to a "settled" destination. Options are not a means by which I fence off and eliminate my options, I would like to try as many as possible. I hear others say, "I must choose one love for my whole lifetime, one job to repeat endlessly, one area to live, it must all be perfect because I will never change." Isn't that like limiting one's life to one meaning? Then they lock themselves in a white picket cage. It's feudal thinking. What's their hurry? In an age of multiple lifespans in which I change so much that I'm not even the same person I used to be, why not multiple interim meanings of life?

There are similar complaints about the overwhelming torrent of information. It's an innately good thing; on the same vein as meaning, I wonder if those who complain about it seek information only long enough to come to the first conclusion, then cut off all contradictory information?

[elizilla]

I've had a lot of different jobs, and been involved with a lot of different organizations. The more different things I do, the more they are all the same. I'm so comfortable with doing something different, that novelty is no longer novel.

There are so many things to learn in every direction, that a dilettante such as myself will never be an expert in anything. You don't see any PhDs after my name. I'm not a ballerina or an olympic athlete and my name isn't listed in the Guinness Book. I never even picked an undergrad major. The people who go on ever deeper into a specialty push up against boundaries I will never see.

I've had eight or nine different lovers in my lifetime. The most painful love to lose was the first one. More recent loves have left my life with a lot less ill will and misery. But is it a good thing to have lost a lover so many times that I've learned to move on so calmly? What kind of skill is that to have? What would it have been like to have loved the same person my whole life?

People who do one thing are not like people who do many things. Not to choose, is also a choice. I'm not making a value judgement here, just noting something curious. Singleness of focus might feel better or worse than casting my net widely, but how would I know? I don't even wish it had been different. I just wonder what it would have been like to be different.

[bjorng.livejournal.com]

I would say that "casting your net widely" is in itself a "singleness of focus", just an unusual one. You're focusing on novelty, as it were. Sounds like you've been pretty successful.

Do you have an urgent need to "do something with yourself"? Or even a latent desire? Personally, I *have* been doing something with myself, though it's never been terribly urgent. And never much the same thing, except broadly (reading, meeting people, working, watching movies, learning new things, etc.).

This past summer I went from being a twenty-year veteran Twixter (minus the debt, and minus the living-with-parents) to being a full-time parent of three young kids. It's quite a change. Yet the only really meaningful difference for me is that I have less free time to do my own things.

Given that my previous eight or more hours of free time on weekdays and 40+ waking hours every weekend over two decades wasn't enough for me to get bored even once, I don't see how this is an advantage.

I like my new family, but it doesn't fulfill a specific need for me. It's just the way things are. I still do things that are just for me, just not as many things. I'm neither more nor less happy now than I was before. (I am more *tired* than before, but that's a transient problem.)