I'll tell you what would solve mine. About $2m.
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Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
41–50 of 192 posts
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#42Seems like a good way to avert a midlife crisis is to explicitly make helping others a non-trivial part of one's life. Focusing on effectiveness on helping others is probably an important component as well. I recommend looking into Effective Altruism - "a philosophy and community focused on maximising the good you can do through your career, projects, and donations" https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ In my case I've…
> Seems like a good way to avert a midlife crisis is to explicitly make helping others a non-trivial part of one's life. Given this is a thread about philosophy, and this looks like the sort of thing that sounds so true nobody bothers looking too closely at whether it is, I feel compelled to ask why it is so?
I wonder if mid life crises possible arise in part due to the lack of a legacy we leave behind, whether it's kids, works for future generations, art, etc, and even acts of altruism. Maybe doing selfless things can be just as strong a cure for the things you always wanted to do for yourself that you feel you haven't lived up to yet?
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#43To me, the crisis comes from having exhausted the low hanging fruit of accomplishing what society expects of you and the feelings you get from youthful joys of sex/food/whatever.
There's a switch that needs to be flipped, from 'I want to feel good', to 'I am doing what needs doing'.
You know what needs doing. You know what needs to stop too. Not to feel better, it won't feel good at all, but it needs doing.
It's irrational - who says anything needs doing? Nothing needs doing, we're all going to die, we only live once, etc. Yup! Needs to be done anyway, or you distract yourself. Those are the two options :)
I'm distracting myself right now! I haven't flipped the switch, I'm still hanging on to feeling good, but with every year, with every month, the flip of the switch just makes... so... much... sense. It's destiny, really. Doing, or distracting.
Anyhoo :)
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#44I think "philosophy" can be substituted with any idea that serves as viable coping mechanism to stress. Any idea that impacts your life in such a powerful way transcends into the realm of spirituality.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're weird if the possession of any amount of money actually solves a problem. I bring this up because I got advice long ago that if you think you need more money to be happy: 1. What you really want is what you can do with that money. 2. There's usually an alternative way to get nearly equal enjoyment for far less money.
The problem that amount of money solves is having to trade your waking hours and obedience to bosses or clients in exchange for room and board.
Is this meant as disagreement with my comment?
To disagree with my comment, you'd have to argue that there is no alternative to getting hit with a big pile of money in order to deal with the problem of a bad job. Without even giving it much thought, I can list a few: change careers; get a better job; marry someone with a decent job, which will expand your employment options; start your own company; live a more frugal life and work fewer hours.
The important thing to take away from the advice is that everything I've listed is a realistic solution but getting the big pile of money isn't.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know, $2 million invested at 5% return would equate to a post-tax income of about $75,000 or so per year which meets the threshold level of being able to own your own home (in a region with relatively depressed property values perhaps) and engage in whatever (relatively low-cost) activities you wanted to for the indefinite future, be it gardening or programming or art or whatever. Of course, that's all predic…
5% real return is a scary thing to try to tie the rest of your life to.
Perhaps they can buy an annuity or something that will bank on 7% average annual over a 20-30 year timespan and guarantee 5% real return each and every year.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
At 35 I started calling myself “middle aged” and my coworkers around the same age looked at me like I was insane and then a rather uncomfortable discussion ensued about age and average lifespan in the US. Nobody in their 30s wants to think that they are in fact “middle aged” and it might be the time to have a “midlife crisis”.
It's all about the culture of your location. In New York City, 35 is young and vibrant and full of life.
I came here to say this.
'Midlife' is not about how long do you live, it's about how advanced you are in the expectations of the social life script, after 'raving youth' and 'settled elderly'.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
5% real return is a scary thing to try to tie the rest of your life to.
Perhaps they can buy an annuity or something that will bank on 7% average annual over a 20-30 year timespan and guarantee 5% real return each and every year.
Does such a product exist? I would be surprised if it does.
(I played with Schwab's annuity estimator and it basically refused to give me an estimate)
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#49People have time for midlife crises? ;)
I guess if you have time for it, you've made it :)
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Seems like a good way to avert a midlife crisis is to explicitly make helping others a non-trivial part of one's life. Given this is a thread about philosophy, and this looks like the sort of thing that sounds so true nobody bothers looking too closely at whether it is, I feel compelled to ask why it is so?
To me it rings true from first principles that involving others in your life leads to higher satisfaction. If we assume as true that consciousness/self-awareness requires others to arise in the first place—that your own model of yourself is an outcome of modelling those around you (since that implies modelling their model of you)—then it seems not such a big leap to assume that taking others out of your life, becomin…
> If we assume as true that consciousness/self-awareness requires others to arise in the first place—that your own model of yourself is an outcome of modelling those around you (since that implies modelling their model of you)—then it seems not such a big leap to assume that taking others out of your life, becoming a leaf node in the network so to speak, would lead to various negative effects.
I think this assumption needs further justification given that I'm conscious and self-aware even when I'm isolated from others, and there are autistic children lacking theory-of-mind while ostensibly being conscious and self-aware. I don't see an obvious link between these things.