>The adult world, even at the highest levels of authority, largely consists of the same petty cliques, backstabbing, lying, and whatnot that you'd experience in

>The adult world, even at the highest levels of authority, largely consists of the same petty cliques, backstabbing, lying, and whatnot that you'd experience in high school I'm not a fan of claiming this type of behavior is childish and something we leave behind after high school. Before advances in mass transportation that made it feasible for people to uproot and move to a new community, most people were stuck in the same ingroup for most of their lives. High school is just a cultural relic that mimics this previous social grouping. It's not necessarily something that kids do that we grow out of - it's the other way around - modern society has broken the existing communities we had in place, but in return gives us the freedom to find new ones anywhere we want.