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Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

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Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#31

Post by [deleted] »

heliodor wrote: post #30
photochemsyn wrote: post #23

A wonderful resource for the laid-off 45-year old coal miners, certain to solve their problems... > "A few years ago, a man experienced a midlife crisis. He was professionally successful and had a rewarding family life, but still had a “hollow” feeling." Just to spell it out, when you have a significant fraction of the population affected by societal collapse and economic insecurity, and with few if any future job pr…

The topic is midlife crisis. A midlife crisis is not about being poor, fearing for your job, or worrying about societal collapse. It's about your existence, purpose, the meaning of life, etc. It applies to all walks of life.

[deleted]

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#33

Post by marginalia_nu »

photochemsyn wrote: post #23

A wonderful resource for the laid-off 45-year old coal miners, certain to solve their problems... > "A few years ago, a man experienced a midlife crisis. He was professionally successful and had a rewarding family life, but still had a “hollow” feeling." Just to spell it out, when you have a significant fraction of the population affected by societal collapse and economic insecurity, and with few if any future job pr…

This isn't the first time in human history a society has had problems. It's not even the first time last 50 years people have felt this way[1]. There is definitely philosophy that addresses living with uncertainty about the future and the certainty of death. Several of the Roman Stoics come to mind.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AVzkTd9R44

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#34

Post by heliodor »

wincy wrote: post #4
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.

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.

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#35

Post by taylorius »

bachmeier wrote: post #8
sgt101 wrote: post #5

I'll tell you what would solve mine. About $2m.

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.

There's also what that money enables you NOT to do.

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#36

Post by michalu »

Can, it can also screw you up even more. Rather ignored part of many "this can do x" articles. A great deal of philosophy is built on individual "thinkers" trying to find the truth in their own heads. A lot of them died pretty unhappy. Many philosophies when distilled down to masses resulted in genocides like French revolution. (This does not apply generally.)

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#37

Post by implements »

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…

This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Owe_the_Future has been compared to your link, though I haven’t read it (it’s out Sept. 1st).

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#38

Post by aetherson »

photochemsyn wrote: post #15
tw600040 wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

5% real return is a scary thing to try to tie the rest of your life to.

Re: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

#40

Post by strogonoff »

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?

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, becoming a leaf node in the network so to speak, would lead to various negative effects.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what seems to happen to many people after a certain age threshold. As we become more self-sufficient, contacts become harder to initiate and sustain. Helping others, however, is increasingly more of an option as you gain age.

Addendum: the above reasoning doesn’t directly address impersonal ways to help (e.g., through donations).

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