Why are there so many adult children out there in the world?

I highly doubt you're a paragon of empathy or understanding, and your post here is very clear evidence.

You want to dunk on them to boost your ego. You're just like them, just younger and more arrogant and blind to your own prejudices, biases, and abuses of others.

I must say that your post itself does not come across as particularly empathetic. Calling people “negative IQ narcissistic garbage” is rather harsh and dehumanizing way to describe them, even when their behaviour is genuinely harmful or immature.

People do not simply choose to become the way they are. If you had inherited their genetic predispositions, been raised by the same parents, and grown up in the same environment, you would very likely think and act much as they do. Treating individuals as the ultimate, free authors of their character and behaviour is an error in my view. This is not an excuse for harmful actions, but it does call for more compassion and a clearer recognition that most of what separates us from them is luck rather than personal moral achievement.

The fact that some of us managed to develop greater empathy or self-awareness is largely a matter of circumstance. It is not a virtue we can fully claim credit for, any more than others can be fully blamed for failing to escape the patterns they inherited.

Religions tend to reinforce being a child, Christianity at least. It makes people more malleable to the social engineering.

People are social creatures. They follow peer pressure. If you want to make the world better, one of the ways is to spend the effort to be better, to work on being kind with other people.

I had two different work friends, years ago. Both of them had low to mid grade homophobia. They'd say things. But after a couple years of me working on them, they stopped.

Was it worth it? Maybe. It was harder than just writing them off, but I like to think as a result of my spending the time with them, they hurt people less.

The people in power are strongly encouraging it, and propaganda works. So yeah, it's pretty hard to fix people like this, or for them to fix themselves.

Is it really THAT hard to break free of the chains of your terrible childhood

Yes, it's hard and you should do some therapy about it, but we don't live in a society that encourages this. I know how you feel but most people are not capable of doing that on their own.

Very old..

In their 60s

lol

People tend to keep their views and the world was a lot different when they were young. It's hard for them to see that conditions have changed or that the victims of the change are not the issue because it worked fine for them in ideal conditions to start a family etc.

They've been programmed by American propaganda about rugged individualism to not seek help with internal strife and to be judgemental of those who lean on others, as well as a specifically targeted belief about therapy being unnecessary and wasted money through even most Hollywood depictions.

It's not a dead end starting point for someone to change for the better, but it's a big hill to get over for someone who accepts no advice, especially from those younger than them.

That all being said, my grandma is in her 80s and is far more progressive than almost every boomer I've ever met and even most gen x.

OP a lot of these responses are shitting on you, but I have asked myself that same question so many times.

It blows my mind how many cluelessly lost people I have met. People who have their shit together really are the exception.

A lot of this comes down to how wildly different the world was when different generations were raised.

People in their 60s and older were raised by parents who lived through extreme hardship and scarcity, where absolute self-reliance and emotional toughness were required just to survive. Empathy wasn't prioritized the same way because survival was the primary goal.

Meanwhile, younger generations were raised in a totally different era - shaped by rapid technological shifts, different parenting styles, and a heavier focus on emotional awareness and participation.

When two groups are forged in completely different environments with different core survival values, they are naturally going to view the world through vastly different lenses. Neither side easily understands the other because their starting points were miles apart.

Well, like everything, it's capitalisms fault. Oligarchs sway the government away from higher taxes (on them) and therefore less spent on social programs and community projects like school, higher education, community spaces, art, etc.

This leads to an increase in stupid sociopaths. Not necessarily their fault entirely. But their actions in life make the problems worse, so it's a feedback loop.

I think it's because they gravitate to jobs and social circles where everyone else behaves similarly and expresses similar views.

As you allude to in your first line, it's a mostly invisible disability. It's also one that is difficult to fix past a certain point, and that point of correction has been actively sabotaged for at least the past 23 years (in the USA).

what do you get when you spend decades eroding a social system that prunes itself and replace it with a social structure that allows inclusive shameless adults that receive little to no punishment?

There are a lot of people in the world, somr will be like that. Besides we are not logical beings, sure logic has helped us a lot but there is no logical thing to do if you are not following or chasing something usually defined by emotions. A goal, a feeling, moral compasses and a lot of other stuff.

Also sometimes people don't know they are even hurt or at least deny it which makes the healing process a lot harder if well, they don't want to heal.

I believe everyone learns something, every piece of information you process and stuff you deduce in your enviroment, people telling you stuff. Some stuff will be useless long term of course, other will be easier to forget. And if you just spend your life changing pleasure or something, without exploring different perspectives aside from your own, staying in the same circle and using bad coping mechanisms I see it unlikely you will learn much, specially if the circle discourages this stuff and critical thinking and you just distract yourself through life.

If the people around you don't grow and that's all you know, and have a possitive perspective around those people it's harder that you grow too.

Also those people are unlikely to be psycopaths. Psycopaths are usually calculative and would not let you know they don't feel empathy. Of course some psycopaths can be good people even without feeling empathy, some could not be so smart and yea yea. Sociopaths are usually more impulsive too from my understanding. I doubt those people are any of those, probably just more like "those people are different" and that's hoe they feel no empathy for them. When you see people as others, outsiders, enemies, different or maybe not even human it can be less likely for you to feel empathy for them.

or idk i don't know how humans work.

One of the great struggles of humanity is 'cognitive load.' Thinking, even if you have a very efficient brain, takes effort, and more advanced thought requires more effort. In hierarchies, part of the power dynamic consists of the displacement of cognitive load. The higher powered individuals don't think about what the lower powered individuals think, and, with enough power, not even the collective. The lower powered individuals, though, must consider the desires of those with higher power in order to make their way through the world. They have to expend effort, to carry the cognitive load.

Those adult children you are talking about are those who have not had to carry the load. People generally don't expend effort they are not forced to, so why would they go to the effort of considering the effects of their actions on others when their life has taught them that's the job of those lower than them? Or that they can do what they want without expending the effort and not only not be punished, but get ahead in life because their society runs on psychopathy?

I've noticed that there are two distinct mindsets in people who have been hurt in one way or another.

The first is "I had it bad, so I don't want others to experience the same."

The second is "I had it bad, so why would anyone else have it better?"

I think they genuinely feel cheated when someone else gets something they never got. And they take it out on the people who did get that thing instead of holding the people accountable who denied them that thing. Even if they didn't deserve to get hurt, that is a shitty outlook to have on life and it's not going to do anyone any good.

I do give leeway to seniors because

• some are miserable, which can lead to spite and close mindedness
• the world might have been didfeeent most of their lives