"Unfinished" Minds

Timothy Leary used to warn of the dangers of "terminal adulthood" while favoring psychological neoteny: retention of child-like curiosity, receptiveness to new ideas, and cognitive flexibility.

Bruce Charlton, a professor at the University of Newcastle, argues that neoteny actually stunts psychological maturity, leaving adults (especially highly educated ones) with “unfinished” minds: "short attention spans, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness."

He goes on to say that, "People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.”

According to Charlton, “child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge” is probably adaptive to the "increased instability of the modern world" and an "increasing need for individuals to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places and make new friends." /Discovery Channel/