This...is critical for our own civilization right now. We have too many people on the extremes: some make a "sacrificial" and heroic life their whole identity, and end up making everyone else around the sacrifice so they can be sacrificial and heroic. Others, in selfish rebellion and without any training in letting go, refuse to sacrifice anything. Basically, if you stay in the first half of life beyond its natural period, you become a well-disguised narcissist or an adult infant (who is also a narcissist) -- both of whom are often thought to be successful "good old boys" by the mainstream culture. No wonder that Bill Plotkin calls us a "patho-adolescent culture".
-- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward
