Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 76 posts

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#41

Post by codpiece »

markus_zhang wrote: post #29
codpiece wrote: post #15

I found listening to the audiobook version of Viktor Frankel's 'Man's search for meaning' was very helpful. Funnily enough, I have read the book but got more out of the audiobook. I know you don't want to hear more fitness, but weightlifting made a huge impact on my outlook. Try 'Starting Strength'. Getting strong makes all the little aches and pains go away and you hit new, easily-measured goals. Finally, visiting t…

Thanks. I'm actually taking up a bit more exercises. I found that I did feel better in the days that I could muster the energy to do exercises. The deathbed recommendation intrigues me. I guess there is some volunteer opportunity about this? I'd love to help dying people but I'm not sure if I have the skills.

Try searching for "Hospice companion volunteer" opportunities in your area.

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#42

Post by physicles »

prometheus76 wrote: post #12
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting, I had a similar experience (except I started as a non-conforming protestant) but actually bypassed eastern thought (I had already looked into it when I was younger and came to the joking conclusion it was atheism with more steps) and eastern orthodox (knew tons of people who grew up evangelical and got into eastern orthodox in college.) I just dove into the meaninglessness and realized if you really…

If everything matters, then every decision and every moment has weight and also matters. The "existential hope" you are talking about sounds just like "do what thou wilt" or the new, more modern adaptation of that phrase "do what you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else". That first phrase is an Anton Lavey quote (a satanist) and the second is a nonsensical libertarian version of the same premise. "Do what tho…

I noticed in your original post that you didn’t address the objective truth of Christianity, only that it has helped you.

What does one do if one simply cannot believe in the supernatural because of the lack of evidence?

I think you’re being a bit uncharitable with the consequences of nihilism — or to be more precise, metaphysical naturalism. I haven’t met very many people, even non-religious people, who truly believe that they can just do whatever the hell they want because nothing matters. If I met people like that, I’d cut them out of my life. Even if you don’t have an intrinsic motivation to do good, you just can’t escape the fact that if you’re an asshole and not a sociopath, your life will probably suck.

The truth is that it’s possible to be a well-adjusted, loving human being while also believing that life is objectively meaningless. (Though ironically, in my anecdotal experience finding happiness as a metaphysical naturalist is harder if you grew up with religion and then left it, like myself). Today we can draw from stoicism, optimistic nihilism, secular humanism and others to help us along the way.

All this said, I do not know whether a worldview divorced from objective meaning is better for building a healthy society. I suspect it’s more difficult without religion, which is one of the reasons religion is so widespread.

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#43

Post by prometheus76 »

physicles wrote: post #42
prometheus76 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everything matters, then every decision and every moment has weight and also matters. The "existential hope" you are talking about sounds just like "do what thou wilt" or the new, more modern adaptation of that phrase "do what you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else". That first phrase is an Anton Lavey quote (a satanist) and the second is a nonsensical libertarian version of the same premise. "Do what tho…

I noticed in your original post that you didn’t address the objective truth of Christianity, only that it has helped you. What does one do if one simply cannot believe in the supernatural because of the lack of evidence? I think you’re being a bit uncharitable with the consequences of nihilism — or to be more precise, metaphysical naturalism. I haven’t met very many people, even non-religious people, who truly believ…

You've asked some very big questions that would require some unpacking to even start to answer, because there are a lot of assumptions and presuppositions and hidden definitions just in the first question of wondering about evidence with regard to supernatural things.

This might feel like a cop-out on my part (and it probably is, because I am at work), but the best response I can give to you is that if you really want to try to understand the issues you raise from a Christian perspective, "Miracles" by C.S. Lewis is probably the most succinct way I could answer your questions. He takes on the problems with nihilism and naturalism in a straightforward, but thorough manner.

I didn't read it until far into my journey back to Christianity, but he addresses the issue better than anyone else I've read.

I will leave you with one little thing that always goes around in my head when I'm talking with a nihilist or naturalist, however. "There is no absolute truth" is an absolute-truth claim, which means the whole foundation of that world view is based on a self-contradiction. That might not bother you, but it started bothering me when it was pointed out.

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#44

Post by prometheus76 »

50 wrote: post #31
prometheus76 wrote: post #5

I grew up as a Mormon and became disillusioned with that as I got older and got exposed to Eastern religions. Over time, I also became disillusioned with Eastern religions because they are ultimately nihilistic. I found Eastern Orthodoxy, which is the perfect marriage between Christianity and mysticism. My whole life has been healed as a result of becoming (and continuing to struggle to be) an Orthodox Christian. My…

I love the Philokalia.

It is a deep well with no bottom.

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#45

Post by neon_electro »

muzani wrote: post #27
ROTMetro wrote: post #17

Failed my family in midlife, lost them all, lost everything. Here are my thoughts. Find gratitude. Find humility. Give up ego. Shut down that voice that says 'but I deserve....'. You live better than almost all of humanity ever has. The King of France had a guy with a bucket follow him around and he would crap into it in public. You live better than the King of France. Find a way to make that enough, more than enough…

"at some point, you will pick up your child for the last time, then set them down and not in the moment realize that you will never pick them up again" I pick up my kids all the time because of this. My wife thinks I'm spoiling them, but there's a very limited period of picking them up. Even the span of time where they're interested in you is limited. They have a fascination with their parents in the first few months…

I empathize with your point of view as far as I am a 30 year old son of a 78 year old father, and I have committed to living close to him (my mother passed 6 years ago) so that he can enjoy as many moments with me as possible before it's his time as well. I'll have the rest of my life without him to go wherever life wants to take me.

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#46

Post by fellowniusmonk »

prometheus76 wrote: post #12
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting, I had a similar experience (except I started as a non-conforming protestant) but actually bypassed eastern thought (I had already looked into it when I was younger and came to the joking conclusion it was atheism with more steps) and eastern orthodox (knew tons of people who grew up evangelical and got into eastern orthodox in college.) I just dove into the meaninglessness and realized if you really…

If everything matters, then every decision and every moment has weight and also matters. The "existential hope" you are talking about sounds just like "do what thou wilt" or the new, more modern adaptation of that phrase "do what you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else". That first phrase is an Anton Lavey quote (a satanist) and the second is a nonsensical libertarian version of the same premise. "Do what tho…

I didn't say that at all. You are referencing other thinkers (if they can be called that based on their poor intellectual rigor) I couldn't care less about and incorrectly reinterpreting the point I made. I think you are pattern matching on the wrong pattern. Mine is a simple enough self originated position that it can be argued about it situ. Classifying it incorrectly as nihilism and then saying "here are books refuting nihilism" isn't a sufficiently interesting or engaged response to warrant attention.

My point is that there is real hope, and if there is hope than progress is real.

We live in a time of unprecedented exponential increase in both our quality of life and our ability to fundementally interrogate reality, I am confident that we have a good chance of cracking fundemental truths in the near future (maybe in my lifetime, maybe in the next 1k years.)

Far from saying "do what thou wilt", I would say, pursue peace, love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness & gentleness be kind to others and invest in as much tech development and other positive human interactions as possible. I think we can crack this if we don't wreck ourselves with hating our fellow man or pruning trees of humanities intellectual exploration for arbitrary reasons.

I have found among certain reformed and orthodox thinkers (though not all, many are very joyful) that they actually are nihilistic in spirit and thought but they avoid confronting this truth about themselves by just kicking the can down the road to the concept God, these types of theists often see nihilism everywhere as a result of it being the real underpinning of their position, and they often sigh and say things like "Lord come quickly" because they have in actuality given up and embraced oblivion and hope for death and "the next life".

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#47

Post by fellowniusmonk »

prometheus76 wrote: post #43
physicles wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed in your original post that you didn’t address the objective truth of Christianity, only that it has helped you. What does one do if one simply cannot believe in the supernatural because of the lack of evidence? I think you’re being a bit uncharitable with the consequences of nihilism — or to be more precise, metaphysical naturalism. I haven’t met very many people, even non-religious people, who truly believ…

You've asked some very big questions that would require some unpacking to even start to answer, because there are a lot of assumptions and presuppositions and hidden definitions just in the first question of wondering about evidence with regard to supernatural things. This might feel like a cop-out on my part (and it probably is, because I am at work), but the best response I can give to you is that if you really wan…

We were just sharing things thay helped us and the things that helped us differred, I'm glad you found something that helped you with despair.

At no point did I claimed there is no absolute truth. There is absolute truth, if you cannot rectify that I hold both positions intellectually without contradiction than there is no room for an honest meeting of the minds.

Many people do get poisoned in their ability to reason through others arguments because of overeager pattern matching after they are exposed to the field of christian apologetics and other sub-academic fields (in terms of rigour of logic) that tend to strawmanning.

Christian mysticism is a way of kicking the can down the road in a way that feels better but is more tied to an embrace of epistemological and emperical uncertainty than truth grounding.

Mysticism is a way of accepting the unverifiable unknown based on external authority statements.

It tends to subvert more truth than it embraces, it's why so many christian thinkers have written against it, when christian theists have spent so much time rebutting the traditional view (which I'm not sure if you hold) I'm not sure what I can add, since I can't speak to the details of how you hold your particular beliefs and what they are.

I say this as someone who has not only read C.S. Lewis extensively (I do hate when argument falls to these types of handwaving appeals to authority) but also better (though less popular because they were academic and didn't speak/write often for popular audience like he did during ww2) christian thinkers like Alvin Plantiga, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and frankly even Francis Schaeffer.

I wish you all the best, and again, you don't have to be right or have "grounded beliefs" for me to be happy that you have overcome despair and are living a more joyful life, I'm glad you found something that lifted you out. Calling myself a nihilist is a dead end for the discussion you seem to want to engage in though.

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#48

Post by 50 »

prometheus76 wrote: post #44
50 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the Philokalia.

It is a deep well with no bottom.

You might be interested in Thomas Merton's The Wisdom of the Desert[1], and this neat blog[2] I follow pertaining to Eastern Orthodoxy.

1. https://www.ndbooks.com/book/the-wisdom-of-the-desert/ 2. https://cassianus.tumblr.com/

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#49

Post by rramadass »

markus_zhang wrote: post #14
simple10 wrote: post #7

I've been going through it as well. There are a few things that helped me so far. 1) There's a biological component where happiness follows a U curve. Mid 40's tends to bottom out on happiness then steadily increases. Useful to know since riding it out is a viable strategy. [1] 2) This translation [2] of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is powerful as a daily reminder that no matter the year or station in life, the stru…

Thanks! 1) Yeah I'm aware of the U curve. Kind of funny that I throw me a bone from time to time to keep myself having better expectation of future life down the road (Let's see if we can study General Relativity in the future -- Yes I know you are unhappy right now and does not have the will power to do any serious study, but maybe in a few years you will); 2) I have seen the Meditations gets mentioned a few times o…

I recommend also reading the Caigentan (japanese: Saikontan). - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caigentan

An excellent book (there are similarities to Meditations) but not that well known.

I have two english translations; one by Robert Aitken (named Vegetable Roots Discourse: Wisdom from Ming China on Life and Living) and the other by William Scott Wilson(Master of the Three Ways: Reflections of a Chinese Sage on Living a Satisfying Life). Both are good but i am partial to the former.

Re: Ask HN: Activity and reading to move through mid-life crisis?

#50

Post by rramadass »

There has been lots of studies done on Mid-Life Crisis; assuming it is Real it seems to involve Genetic, Biological, Psychological and Social factors. So you have to consider each one in turn, interpret it in your specific context and then take action.

Here are some resources that you may find helpful:

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midlife_crisis

2) https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-02206-x

3) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-rea...

4) https://openthemagazine.com/science/the-genetic-origins-of-a...

5) https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/am-i-having-a-midlif...

6) There is a tradition of "mind training" in Tibetan Buddhism called Lojong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojong) which you may want to study, learn from and put into practice. These are basically a set of practical advice/sayings/aphorisms/proverbs/etc. which teach you how to develop/modify your attitudes and perceptions towards life/other people/yourself in general. It was developed in the context of Buddhist practice but you can easily transfer the principles outside of it. A good starting point is the book Essential Mind Training: Tibetan Wisdom for Daily Life translated by Thupten Jinpa.

Post reply on HN