The Roots of Midlife Crisis

It's the paradox of happiness. Pursuing happiness as your goal in life is the one sure-fire way never to achieve it.

More than that, the cold, calculating, statistical logic of a utilitarian hedonism that you see so much of in a "scientific" approach to happiness, fails to account of the difference between kinds of happiness: Is it better to be a pig satisfied or a Socrates dissatisfied?

Scientism is what transforms a beautiful piece of music into lifeless vibration frequencies. There's more to reality than what a mere scientific description can tell you.

I have. It surprised me a lot. Maybe it is because we tend to remember the good parts.

That sounds like a load to me. Pursuing happiness is often a good way to achieve it. There's no reason science can't account for different kinds of happiness, nor is there any reason science can't account for the beauty of music.

Okay I haven't read the article but I don't need to. I can tell you in pure and simple terms what midlife crisis is:

It's the time when we confront, what I like to call, the reality of biology.

That it's all downhill from that point onwards no matter what we do. Every birthday is in reality a 'sadder' birthday instead of a happy one, although we never put it that way because for us first-world denizens, political correctness is the utmost virtue. It's our "all the king's men" moment! All your riches, your amazing family and friends, your lifetime of successes are sooner or later going down the drain for you and there's no way out. And this is after you already had gotten used to the idea that you're not "young" anymore, a realization for which you paid a heavy emotional and psychological price and then told yourself "it's going to be fine from now on".

And some of the typical reactions to the crisis are easily explained away if you think this way. Either you conclude about the meaninglessness of it all and become irresposible in one way or another, socially, maybe in terms of health, etc. Or you submit yourself to it and start thinking of yourself as "a coach for the next generation", for your children, for the youth around you, what have you.

However there is a kind of reaction that almost no one adopts. And it's encapsulated well by Dylan Thomas's poem, 'do not go gentle into the good night; rage, rage against the dying of the light'.

Essentially the problem with the submissive approach is, it's too much of a coincidence that we get used to the idea as soon as it hits us. We realize we lost our youth, and we get used to the idea. Then we realize that sooner or later we're going to loose our existence, and we again get used to the idea.

(A nice video related to the ideas I've expressed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb-OYmHVchQ)

So what is this "third" reaction?

It's the realization that biology is a scaffolding on top of the physics of reality. Biology does not dictate everything. Physics does. And if there is something that physics allows but biology doesn't, something can be done about it.

Luckily we're living in the second decade of the twenty first century. Much of what I say might not have made sense a hundred years ago, much less a thousand years ago. But we're here, now. And now is exciting and full of promise. The revolution of genetics, rejuvenation biotechnology, and nanotechnology, is opening new doors everyday, and as a result, blinding us to the glare of possibilities.

Except that most people find it off-putting. And that's where the coincidence I mentioned above plays its role. To a very good approximation, the whole world's population can easily be divided into two kinds; the ones who are (psychologically) unaware of their existential bummer, and the ones who are aware but are completely okay with it (because they got used to the idea almost at the moment it struck them). And when you try to shake them up, try to awaken them from their deep slumber of submissiveness, they feel offended. They feel being dragged out of their comfort zone without their will. And they end up resisting whatever you say, even when it might be in their best interest to support you.

I don't know how to conclude this comment but I'd say this, we're living in a very empowering era as of now (2014). We could choose to give one strong push as humanity and get rid of many of the shackles of biology. Or we could choose to prefer tradition and conservation and live many more decades with the idea that the reason the way things are is because it's natural, and because it's best, and because it's the way it's meant to be.

Nah - that's why it's interesting that the article focused on a tenured professor. Speaking as one of the same, I can confirm: Stability does not equate to subjective perception of happiness. I know a lot of profs who've _left_ guaranteed, stable, tenured jobs to run off to industry within a few years of getting tenure. (Ok, so they all went to a startup or to Google, but still: They gave up security with a very reasonable, if not industry-equivalent, income.)