21–30 of 288 posts
> When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".
My entirely unscientific theory is that like other cells, we're born with a limited number of fucks in our body. When we're young, we (instinctively, subconsciously) feel like our fucks reserves are plentiful, so we give a fuck about a lot of stuff. As we get older, our reservoir of fucks gets progressively depleted. The fucks are rarer, so we give a fuck less and less often. I've recently turned 40 and I can definit…
When you're younger smaller problems seem larger because you've not been desensitised to larger problems. As you progress through life you generally experience greater stress and thus the smaller problems feel smaller. You could look at it like desensitisation to capsicum, salt, violence or pornography.
At age 20 or so, I read a quote in a book (on day trading, IIRC) that went something like: "Master your emotions, or they will master you." After thinking about it, I realized that despite identifying as a logical-thinking individual, I was nevertheless at the mercy of the more primitive parts of my brain. Sometimes totally, but pretty much all executive functions were influenced by it to a large degree. That might b…
Being able to view your thoughts and feelings in an abstract, manageable way is incredibly important.
I wonder what portion of "older people being more emotionally balanced" can be explained by more emotionally balanced people surviving longer in Western society? Sounds like something somebody will have tried to quantify at least in terms of the order of magnitude?
> When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".
The author just appears to use complete hyperbole to get a reaction from his students and readers. Not to be taken seriously.
> When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".