"Those who succeed in an outstanding way seldom do so before the age of 40. More often, they do not strike their real pace until they are well beyond the age of 50."
Napoleon Hill
Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
81–90 of 192 posts
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#82These kinds of discussions remind of this passage from Mere Christianity by CS Lewis: Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in lov…
So, it's either keep grasping at something that isn't there, give up on the thing and accept it isn't there, or come to Jesus and get it in the afterlife.
I've always been baffled by CS Lewis. Quite a mix of insight and rational incoherence.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all about the culture of your location. In New York City, 35 is young and vibrant and full of life.
Yeah I'm 34 in SF, turning 35 this autumn, and feeling like I'm literally in my prime. Old enough to have matured, experienced enough to have some good battle scars, young and energetic enough that there's decades of quality life ahead of me. The mindset stability that came in the past few years has been nice. Hustling for the shiniest immediate goal in sight no longer appeals, but there's plenty of energy to go afte…
A friend died at 51 not long ago. If you die at is age, you are already 68% of the way there. It's not barely getting started, it's behind you.
More realistically, a man who is 35 years old has a life expectancy of another 43 years, so not quite there yet.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#84Seems 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…
I've done this for over a decade, and "Effective Altruism" does NOT prevent midlife crises. There's more nuance to it. (In my case, my day job that paid VERY well involved things that are very much against my ethics. Even giving away 20% of the money to good causes didn't stop the guilt. So now I'm "retired" but mostly just wallowing in guilt of enabling horrific things while lying to myself about "making the world b…
Damn dude what did you do? Sell Ads to teens?
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#85People need more philosophy in their lives. All of the modern "self-help" nonsense is just a reductionist, simplified shadow of what the ancients have had to say for thousands of years.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
It satisfies the "social chimp brain" that you are in good standing with the community.
I would note that servants, butlers, cleaners, and the like who spend large chunks of their day serving others are generally not held in high regard by society. We even use community society as a punishment for criminals.
That's a job though, not altruism.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure once you hit 2m it will then be 10m :)
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…
> invested at 5% return
What are some of the investments that can give me this rate of return. Also, the principle needs to keep growing to account for inflation too yea?
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#88I'm looking at journal articles about how age correlates with happiness and this sentence doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence in the state of research: This paper is the mirror image of Blanchflower (2020b) that examined unhappiness data and finds comparable evidence using twenty different measures for an unhappiness curve that maximized with controls at age 49 compared with a zenith of happiness estimated in t…
Back in the day, people would get married and have a few kids early in life. 48 is when the kids would be leaving the home. So you are probably making a decent salary, no longer have kids at home, and are young enough to still be healthy. Now you can have sex without worrying about the kids hearing. Can travel whenever you want. Have money to buy whatever toys you want. Have time to pick up new hobbies. Etc. Bottom l…
49 or 50 is the average age when kids leave the house today. Average age of the mother at last birth is 31 in the US: https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/ca.... That's as of 2019, for women in mid-late Gen X. The average. The number will drift up a bit with millennials, but since the average age of the mother at first birth has gone from ~25 to ~27 I wouldn't expect to go dramatically up.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#89Seems 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?
There's a whole (relatively new) empirical study of happiness, called Positive Psychology, that's been ongoing for decades.
The claim I made is broad, so it's not based on one experiment, but on numerous factors that point in the same direction. We are social creatures, and feeling like we are a part of a greater whole makes people happier. In the recent book Happy Money, the authors, two Ph.D. researchers in the area, describe experiments that indicate that spending money on others promotes happiness. Of the three components of Self-Determination Theory, one is "Relatedness", feeling connected with and caring others (contributing to a bigger whole). I'm happy to share more.
Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
#90[deleted]