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Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

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Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#111

Post by [deleted] »

thegrimmest wrote: post #73
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #56

Acceptance. My survival strategy for mid-life has been to replace the ambition and balls that got me through my 20's and 30's with age appropriate acceptance of the MANY things I cannot control & don't have time to do, with a wisdom to focus on the FEW things that are likely to matter to me when I hit my 70's and beyond. For example, I can't control the divorce that consumed a ton of time and money in my 40's, but I…

Acceptance is basically the one and only key to happiness - it's simple to say and hard to practice. But by practicing it even the most miserably ill and destitute people can be happy. It's also not a particularly new idea, going back at least as far as Buddhism. It's also why I'm not inclined to agree with things like perceived inequality as being the root of all misery.

[deleted]

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#112

Post by badpun »

sneak wrote: post #46
aetherson wrote: post #38

Earlier 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.

If such annuity existed, people wouldn’t put money into index funds :) They have similar or smaller average expectations there, but with no guarantees and with massive volitality.

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#113

Post by alecbz »

ccooffee wrote: post #65
yboris wrote: post #10

Seems 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…

I think effective altruism and the kind of altruism that can give someone deeper meaning and connection (and thus avert things like midlife crises) are not the same, sometimes maybe mutually exclusive.

Going out to a remote country and helping people directly yourself, while you live with them and are integrated with their lives, might give you a sense of connection and meaning[0], but EA would likely dictate that this is a pretty ineffective use of your time, since you're probably much better at things like $YOUR_CAREER than you are at directly helping people in remote countries with their problems. So you should instead do $YOUR_CAREER, make money and donate it to people who can help others more directly, with perhaps a less personal touch (more "mass distributing mosquito nets", less "helping individual families with issues").

[0]: Of course if you're completely ineffective, you might not feel good about it. But I think the level of effectiveness required to make you feel good is much, much lower than the optimal levels of effectiveness that EA is shooting for.

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#114

Post by deebosong »

I like this quote:

In this sense, Setiya believes, “Midlife” is about middle age, but middle age just represents a more acute stage of existential insecurity that is always present.

Makes me wonder, what does existential security look like, because the quote rings true.

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#116

Post by alecbz »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #24
yboris wrote: post #10

Seems 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?

We're inherently very social creatures. I'm sure a lot's been written on this, but I like "The Social Leap"'s telling of it: we basically evolved from our primate ancestors by being pushed out of the rainforest into the Savannah. Our normal primate defense of climbing into trees was unavailable, and the way we found to survive was working together in groups.

Years of evolution have wired into our brains that we're supposed to be interacting and working with others.

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#117

Post by marginalia_nu »

alecbz wrote: post #116
marginalia_nu wrote: post #24

Earlier 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?

We're inherently very social creatures. I'm sure a lot's been written on this, but I like "The Social Leap"'s telling of it: we basically evolved from our primate ancestors by being pushed out of the rainforest into the Savannah. Our normal primate defense of climbing into trees was unavailable, and the way we found to survive was working together in groups. Years of evolution have wired into our brains that we're su…

Even if this is true, what reason is there to think this is the cure for mid-life crisis?

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#118

Post by alecbz »

tayo42 wrote: post #3

I wonder if the "midlife" part of midlife crisis does some harm. Other then me not being in my midlife (well i hope lol, don't think i want to die at 60) a lot of those issue resonate. Shrinking of possibilities, empty feeling as i pursue things. Ive felt this way on and off since my 20s and have talked with friends about similar feelings.

I think generally these things might just be called existential crises, and it just so happens that people tend to experience one at around 40.

I've also been having one for the past 3 years (the tail of my 20s), which I've been kinda labeling my "quarter life crisis" (which isn't really mathematically right but seems to align with popular usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis)

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#119

Post by a9h74j »

yboris wrote: post #89
marginalia_nu wrote: post #24

Earlier 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?

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 a…

Somehow, I am associating Self-Determination Theory with ACT -- acceptance and committment therapy. In any event, 'acceptance' and 'committment' appear pertinent to many comments here.

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#120

Post by exolymph »

thegrimmest wrote: post #73
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #56

Acceptance. My survival strategy for mid-life has been to replace the ambition and balls that got me through my 20's and 30's with age appropriate acceptance of the MANY things I cannot control & don't have time to do, with a wisdom to focus on the FEW things that are likely to matter to me when I hit my 70's and beyond. For example, I can't control the divorce that consumed a ton of time and money in my 40's, but I…

Acceptance is basically the one and only key to happiness - it's simple to say and hard to practice. But by practicing it even the most miserably ill and destitute people can be happy. It's also not a particularly new idea, going back at least as far as Buddhism. It's also why I'm not inclined to agree with things like perceived inequality as being the root of all misery.

This is also a huge theme of the Bible — possibly all religions?
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