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

The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

royalsocietypublishing.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 104 posts

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#51

Post by selimthegrim »

grammarisking wrote: post #25
kkoncevicius wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly same suggestion is found in Kabbalah: in order to study it you have to be above 40 years old, expert in Talmud, and expert in Jewish law.

40 years is also a significant age within Islam, whereby a person usually reaches their prime. Explicitly mentioned in this verse for example: "We have commanded people to honour their parents. Their mothers bore them in hardship and delivered them in hardship. Their ˹period of˺ bearing and weaning is thirty months. In time, when the child reaches their prime at the age of forty, they pray, “My Lord! Inspire me to ˹a…

Is that why my mom told me not to get married until 40?

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#52

Post by ekianjo »

ericmcer wrote: post #34

I recently read a story about two people on their death beds, both had worked hard and achieved success in their fields. One was happily reflective and talked about what a journey life had been, the other was upset and remorseful, talking about how much time he had wasted. I wonder if the contents of your life are secondary to your semi-hardwired emotional state. I am naturally somewhat anxious and hate wasting a day…

> At the end if you are an unhappy person it will not be enough, and if you are naturally content it will all seem ok.

Yeah, regression to the baseline (happiness). Which is why trying to change your own life based on other people's dying regrets is utter stupidity.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#53

Post by fumar »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #49
sethaurus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on this? Are you saying that being unconcerned about how one appears to others is a sociopathic trait? Which aspect of the GP would make someone a "loser"?

I believe parent is referencing this specifically: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

I reread this whenever someone posts it and every time I feel a little pang inside. It is almost too spot-on inside a large and established technology organization.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#54

Post by souprock »

tayo42 wrote: post #26
emerged wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m about to turn 40 and have never felt less in crisis. Although I have never had any fear of my own mortality which could be what drives the crisis for many people. I also don’t tend to care much about what I’m “supposed” to do in life vs what I want to do.

Curious if your hobbies include anything physical? Turned 30 recently and I feel like there's a good chance I won't do what I want in sports. Not so much about mortality but feeling your self not be as athletic as you have sucks and it only gets worse.

Physical troubles lead to being not athletic, which leads to mortality. For example: a bad knee joint prevents most exercise, leading to obesity and then onward to diabetes and heart failure.

Physical activity sometimes causes those physical troubles. Injury can turn an athlete into very much not an athlete.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#55

Post by UnFleshedOne »

sethaurus wrote: post #43
CMCDragonkai wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the loser, clueless, sociopath transition.

Could you elaborate on this? Are you saying that being unconcerned about how one appears to others is a sociopathic trait? Which aspect of the GP would make someone a "loser"?

Those are technical terms of Gervais Principle school of office classifications.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#56

Post by renjimen »

dilap wrote: post #47

"We are now trapped in a world of kids. Old kids. The disappearance of patrimonial transmission means that an old guy today is just a useless ruin. The thing we value most of all is youth, which means that life automatically becomes depressing, because life consists, on the whole, of getting old." --Houellebecq

What about the other half of the population? It's an interesting quote but it doesn't explain why women also experience midlife crises.

Could it simply be that a focus on career and modern nuclear families provide less satisfaction for the middle aged? That might explain the diminished patriarchal/matriarchal aspects for men and women.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#57

Post by trianglem »

closeparen wrote: post #48
trianglem wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you push through a phase with no corrective mechanism allowed on the other side? How do you propose you correct your kids? Corporal punishment is quick and decisive and both parties can move on quickly as opposed to the lifelong mental baggage that weighs down a lot of people in the western world.

What makes you say you can quickly move on? Isn’t it the whole point to create a powerful memory that instills lasting fear and influences all future decisions?

My memory of corporal punishment — three times in my life — was a reminder of the severity of how wrong something I did was and looking back at it was completely justified. It’s not fear as much as shock to remember the moment. The pain was insignificant and so there was no fear, at least for me.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#58

Post by leetcrew »

ekianjo wrote: post #52
ericmcer wrote: post #34

I recently read a story about two people on their death beds, both had worked hard and achieved success in their fields. One was happily reflective and talked about what a journey life had been, the other was upset and remorseful, talking about how much time he had wasted. I wonder if the contents of your life are secondary to your semi-hardwired emotional state. I am naturally somewhat anxious and hate wasting a day…

> At the end if you are an unhappy person it will not be enough, and if you are naturally content it will all seem ok. Yeah, regression to the baseline (happiness). Which is why trying to change your own life based on other people's dying regrets is utter stupidity.

for sure. it's easy to say "I wish I'd done X" when all the effort required for X would already be in the past.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#59

Post by renjimen »

brianjunyinchan wrote: post #41
standardUser wrote: post #14

While it's interesting to read about these concepts in the context of the time they were established (even if they do come off as hopelessly classist) I have always despised how they become conventional wisdom far beyond their shelf life. It compels people to ignore their unique life circumstances in favor of a shortcut explanation that may not apply to them at all. I've always been similarly wary of concepts like "r…

> If we have a bunch of de-personalized frameworks to help explain the course of our own lives, it only moves us farther away from seeing our lives for what they really are Very well put. I feel most popular content about {categorized mental dynamic} has gone through a sort of natural selection of ideas, where they evolve to appear as very sound explanations to a general, population-scale public forum. But they equiv…

This is a large motivation of mine for reading fiction and watching good drama. The best of it can provide insights into my own life that {categorized mental dynamic} is too blunt an instrument to probe. The Crown springs to mind - the latest season is absolutely fantastic for furthering my understanding of the human condition. My wife and I find ourselves discussing every episode and character at length for all their nuances, which are often difficult to put into words.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#60

Post by knaq »

The article's most important quote:

"All this is denied me in this stale marriage to an elderly, sickly, complaining, nagging wife. Let's get rid of her, start life all over again with another woman."

Even if a person doesn't consciously have the thought, there is a biological drive to reproduce. Even if a person expresses the desire to be childless, that biological urge may be pushing for a younger mate who might be fertile.

That leads to the anxiety. Trying to do impressive things and to display wealth, no matter how useless, is a biological urge. It becomes time to buy the fast car or take up hang gliding. When sanity and resource limits pull back on that, the emotions don't go so well.

Post reply on HN