As modern adults in the year 2017, a time in history marked by liberalism of interpretation, we hereby proclaim a new, adaptive paradigm to describe the constitution of adulthood. We admonish the reader to consider these tenets:
I. Adulthood. An adult is inherently unsure when adulthood begins. The 18-year age of majority statute is intrinsically ambiguous. Adulthood as defined by biological sexual maturity is not the purview of this manifesto.
II. Sex. An adult may have or have had sex. An adult may have sex with any gender. An adult may be asexual. An adult may live life a virgin. An adult might not possess reproductive organs.
III. Sobriety. An adult may choose to party until 6 a.m. There is no chain that shackles adults to the concept of moderation. Correspondingly, adults are not obliged to get shwifty at all.
IV. Marriage. An adult is not required to marry. An adult may marry. Marriage does not equate adulthood. Just look at Johnny Depp.
V. Parenthood. An adult is not defined by the rearing of a child whether of their ilk or adopted. Some adults opt to grow these, and others choose sleep.
VI. Work. An adult will work at what they will, free from the discrimination that heretofore labeled certain endeavors less worthy of adulthood than others (namely, making comics).
VII. Career. An adult is not obliged to follow a career path that leads clearly and straightly to a predictable future ending in certain death. An adult will blaze their own trail whose mile-markers are distinct from any other.
VIII. Success. An adult individually defines and seeks the degree of success at which they are personally satisfied, and no more. This definition may or may not be influenced by their community and ideology, but Scientology will always be confusing.
IX. Bills. An adult lives within their financial means. This is contrary to the antecedent which held that adults should live on credit and be perpetually answerable to the weasel class.
X. Stock market. An adult playing the stock market is no more or less adult than one playing Call of Duty. The former’s game has great or disastrous affects on others. The latter’s game dries out your eyes a little.
XI. Home ownership. An adult is not beholden to purchase a house by the age of 30 to live the rest of their physically independent years indebted to banking institutions.
XII. Car ownership. An adult is not required to own a car that they hate but can’t afford a better one just yet because the lease is yet to be up on this piece of shit Kia.
XIII. Civility. An adult has the freedom to be intellectually promiscuous, and to shrug at dinner parties when others get uncomfortable when he or she brings up Roe v. Wade.
XIV. Humor. An adult is free to make lewd or base jokes previously considered juvenile for as long as their sense of humor remains malleable to the times. Adults do not need to conform to the comity of bygone eras.
XV. Acceptance. An adult does not force others to conform to their idea of things. Rather, an adult manipulates opinion subliminally using emotive propaganda.
XVI. Goodness. An adult is good to adults and non-adults no matter stature, creed, or appearance. Charitable giving for tax exemption’s sake does not count.
