March assignment week 2 post 1

Of youth and Age

Central Argument: Both the young and the old have their flaws and therefore both are needed to ‘correct the defects’ of each other.

Of youth and age is an essay written by Sir Francis Bacon in which he compares the young to the experienced. He believes the youth to be immature and hasty since they ‘embrace more than they can;...fly to the end’ without really knowing what to expect at the end. This results in numerous errors and and inconveniences that undermines the youths work. The old on the other hand may be mature but ‘consult too long, adventure too little.’ This results in them not being able to stick with something until the very end as they are also content with mediocre success. Due to these reasons it is best for there to be a number of both young and mature men around so they can ‘correct [each others] defects.’

The main defect of the youth, according to Bacon, is that we take on too much work at any one time and so can not finnish the work properly. In some cases this is true as a lot of us tend to take on way more work than we can handle cause a lot of the time we over estimate our capabilities. This is specially true when it comes to choosing courses at the start of the school year, we tend to choose a great number of hard courses thinking of impressing colleges in out transcripts. However at the end of the school year all we have is a sheet of paper showing off our exceptionally mediocre grade, as a result of taking on way more work than we can actually handle.

Bacon believes that people of age take a really long time making decisions in their life making them inefficient. This seems true when looking at stock brokers, I look at these people specifically as one needs to be able to make hasty decisions when trading stocks to be able to succeed. When looking at this group of people you will notice that there are hardly any who are over a certain age, this is most probably since after a time one is not able to make quick decisions.

I do not however believe that old people are satisfied with mediocrity it is actually the exact opposite, specially with what has happened with me. I for one always end up doing a job my dad asked me to do in a mediocre fashion but he on the other hand always has perfection in everything he does. This while is completely contrasting to one of Bacon’s ideas it does not thwart his overall idea. 

When you look at the world you see people of all ages working together, moving the world forward. This has been working for millenniums and will continue to do so in the distant future. Youth and maturity working together; it is a time tested model and so far has always worked out for the better, reflecting the ideas of Sir Francis Bacon.