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The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

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Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#61

Post by paganel »

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?

Not the OP, but I think it’s not the slap on your bottom that should scare you as a kid, but the fear when thinking about the slap, and even more so, the thought that you made your parents so upset that they now have to slap you, even though they don’t want to.

Of course, that only works with parents who don’t resort to slapping their kids’ bottoms like it’s nothing (after a while you become accustomed to it as a kid, it doesn’t scare you anymore), and also parents who genuinely love their kids and who have a close and warm relationship with said kids, that way when the kid sees that he has upset his parents he knows he did something bad even before the slap (and in that way avoiding it altogether).

Trying to only use reason with kids who are 4 or 5 years old won’t work.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#62

Post by renjimen »

trianglem wrote: post #57
closeparen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a child is old enough to understand (usually younger than you think, judging from my friends' children), they're old enough to deserve a conversation about why what they did was not a good thing. Will they act out again? Probably, but that only requires more energy and intelligence from the parent to educate their child.

Corporal punishment is lazy, short-sighted parenting that is a "chronic, developmental stressor associated with depression, aggression and addictive behaviors" [1]. Honestly, I'm shocked this is being supported on Hackernews, of all places.

Maybe you're right that Western parents are caught between an era of corporal punishment and not knowing how to parent alternatively. Does that mean reverting to violence against children? Absolutely not. Surely it means understanding how to communicate with your children better.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2896871/?_escap...

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#63

Post by borroka »

redelbee wrote: post #31

I just finished reading “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear” by Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) and she brought up a related and interesting idea I can paraphrase: In midlife we’re concerned with status and our outward appearance, which can hinder creative output. Then we get older and realize that we don’t care what anyone thinks about us, which can lead to more creative risk taking and accomplishmen…

"nobody is thinking about you (except you) so it’s not worth concerning yourself with status or outside validation."

This is often repeated, but it is so untrue that I don't get why well-intentioned people repeat it. Nobody thinks about me as much as I think about me, but some make decisions, be romantic, professional, based on what they think about me, that is my appearance, my status, my money, my family.

As usual, the truth is between the straw-man extremes, which are in this case "nobody is ever concerned about me" and "everyone is thinking about me all the time." Now, it is not that older people realize that nobody is thinking about them and they were previously mistaken when thinking otherwise, they simply become aware that people are not thinking as much about them anymore, since they starting to be (or are) out of the game.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#64

Post by neuromanser »

redelbee wrote: post #31

I just finished reading “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear” by Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) and she brought up a related and interesting idea I can paraphrase: In midlife we’re concerned with status and our outward appearance, which can hinder creative output. Then we get older and realize that we don’t care what anyone thinks about us, which can lead to more creative risk taking and accomplishmen…

> In midlife we’re concerned with status and our outward appearance

That seems completely backwards to me. I've never been more comfortable with being myself, whatever I am, than now, in mid-forties. My midlife crisis is raging out of control, because I'm looking at things that are outside of my reach. Activities I'm too frail to do, girls I'm too old to date... It's more of a temporary Peter Pan syndrome than anything else.

Life runs past you really quickly, one day you wake up realizing it's still the 20-something you, just in a 40-something body. Midlife crisis is the process of coming to terms with the physical, temporal reality.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#65

Post by x87678r »

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-...

Too long to read the whole thing, but the first section is one of the most amazingly accurate insights I've seen in a long time.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#66

Post by x87678r »

africanboy wrote: post #42
UncleOxidant wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your therapist can say life begins at 40 because for a therapist their career starts kicking into high gear at that point and really just keeps going upward until retirement. For a software developer your career can start heading downhill even before 40 - age seems to have no advantage (with regard to career stability) for software developers like it does for therapists, doctors and lawyers.

I am a software developer, my career had its best moments when I was in my 20s, but at 43 I am making more money with less effort and more enjoyment than all the past 20 years combined.

You're lucky, my best moments were in my 20s, my best paid were 30s, and now its just downhill everywhere. :)

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#67

Post by konjin »

renjimen wrote: post #56
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.

Having listened to a few women going through theirs: kids.

Either not having them, the kids not meeting their mothers expectations or the kids never wanting to see their mothers again once they grow up.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#68

Post by SoSoRoCoCo »

brundolf wrote: post #2

I'm in my late 20s, and already starting to feel some anxiety around the nearing conclusion of what could be called my "youth". But my therapist, in his forties, has experienced (and relayed to me) the "life begins at 40" philosophy (I didn't actually realize it was something other people said until I saw this article). It's not just wishful thinking for him: he felt that he didn't really figure out who he was, didn'…

> "life begins at 40"

As someone who is mid-50's, everything turned around at 40. Health, physique (was at the gym 4 days a week), job (quit a loathed job and found one I liked), relationship (got a well-needed divorce). I feel like I wasted my 20's being anxious and my 30's being married to someone I didn't love.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#69

Post by grahamburger »

trianglem wrote: post #46
skim_milk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since corporal punishment is not allowed, parents tend to discipline their kids by attacking their self worth. There's no doubt we're in this awkward generation where our parents were probably treated with corporal punishment, but still want to inflict onto their kids this which they were exposed to as a kid despite this no longer looking good/being legal. Even the anti-child-abuse book "For Your Own Good" by Alice…

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.

> How do you propose you correct your kids?

It's not hard. You just talk to them. It takes a little bit of patience and self awareness. Sometimes they're still gonna fuck up. But then, so are you.

Re: The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

#70

Post by [deleted] »

trianglem wrote: post #16

Tangentially related, but I think that there’s a real problem in western society around the teen years. Since corporal punishment is not allowed, parents tend to discipline their kids by attacking their self worth. This leads to a reliable pattern of teens “hating” their parents, a phenomenon that is non existent in the rest of the world especially Asia. This also leads to a huge disparity in what percentage of kids…

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