Because those who can't control their feelings don't tend to live as long, due to poor health and less meaningful social life, all resulted from bad temper?
Hormones go down and we get more experienced with all the crap life throws at everybody. Older folks tend to know themselves much better and also what they want in life, what actually matters and what is shallow bullsh*t.
Yeah, I'm surprised that the article seems to just ignore the role of hormones. There's certainly a decline in testosterone as men age [1]:
> Total testosterone levels fall at an average of 1.6% per year whilst free and bioavailable levels fall by 2%–3% per year ... [t]wenty percent of men aged over 60 have total testosterone levels below the normal range and the figure rises to 50% in those aged over 80.
I know there's been a lot of pushback on the idea that testosterone is just a masculine hormone, but the link between testosterone and aggression [2] seems pretty well-accepted. So it seems reasonable that declining testosterone might make you more even-keeled.
Or it could just be that in societies, where aggression is rewarded with social status, testosterone will increase aggression because it increases the thrive for social status:
> The relationship between testosterone and aggression may also function indirectly, as it has been proposed that testosterone does not amplify tendencies towards aggression but rather amplifies whatever tendencies will allow an individual to maintain social status when challenged. In most animals, aggression is the means of maintaining social status. However, humans have multiple ways of obtaining social status. This could explain why some studies find a link between testosterone and pro-social behaviour if pro-social behaviour is rewarded with social status. Thus the link between testosterone and aggression and violence is due to these being rewarded with social status.
I realise that a lot of people have anxiety issues, but to call it abuse is just stupid. They are genuinely people looking back on their life experience and giving advice.
> It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it.
I have to disagree. My grandparents often have great perspectives on life situations that they readily share when relevant to the people around them. No one sees it as rude, and if they do, it’s usually because the advice hits a little too close to home. Like “when I went through my divorce…”
Yes, I am not disputing that. I am talking about the difference between giving someone advice about a situation they're in, and telling them how to feel about it.
"When I was your age, I didn't appreciate certain things so I'm pointing them out to you" is really different from "this is the best time of your life" which is a statement an external observer is just not equipped to make about someone else's life.
Those two things mean the same thing in casual conversation. I'm plenty picky about rhetoric when it comes to serious debate, but I would align your view more with trying to bully people over some sense of unfairness.
> but there is a huge huge gulf between "that was the best time of my life" and "this is the best time of your life.
Not really. It's notional advice, offered in a spirit of kindness. You don't have to like it, but labeling it 'extremely rude at best' is absolutely infantile.
I mean, coming from some boomer who owns 5 houses and lives off rent while I'm paying his social security and subsidizing his stock market risk, and I'm going to be lucky to save enough to afford to die on the street with a grossly inflated tech income... "extremely rude at best" seems appropriate. I'd throw quite a few more words in there and maybe even a left hook under the right circumstances. Because fuck you too, boomer.
I understand the sentiment but it’s worth noting in the US the median boomer _household_ wealth is 134k. More than 45% of boomer households have no extra retirement savings or income.
I think it’s pretty fair to criticize that generations lack of forethought but not so much wealth hoarding.
Obviously someone who has been working over 30 years less than someone else has significantly less money than them? Do you think the people in the 65-74 age group had the same $266,400 median when they were in the under 35 age group? Of fucking course not, that's idiotic.
Whoa, you can't post like this here, and we ban accounts that do. No more of this please.
I'm sure there's legitimate experience behind the feelings but it's not a good use of this site to allow them to turn into generational flamewar, let alone violent rants.
We don't care what your opinions are. We care about you following the site guidelines, which include things like "Be kind," "Don't fulminate", and "Eschew flamebait". Can you please stick to the rules? I'm sure you can find thoughtful ways to express your substantive views if you want to.
It's better to make the most of being young and then continue to make the most of your life, than to not make the most of your life at a young age, then regret it when you're older
Calling everything toxic or abusive seems to have replaced a range of expressive terms and phrases, like "that's an asshole thing to say" or "what the fuck is wrong with you."
Are you kidding me?! Unsolicited advice can be mildly annoying!!!! I may have to just nod my head in approval just to move the conversation along, even though I might not agree!! HORIFFIC ABUSE.
The author just appears to use complete hyperbole to get a reaction from his students and readers. Not to be taken seriously.
It shows contempt. It might not be abuse itself, but it's definitely something abusers say. If he's confusing those things he probably deserves your compassion, not your indignation.
I can understand how that sentence from someone not close to you, and without any further explanation can be distressing. What I imagine telling my kids is "This is the best time of your life, you can enjoy it because the things that society has you worried about right now, like getting good grades, being socially liked, collecting achievements, are not going to matter that much anymore once you are an adult and have gained experience and, more importantly, self-confidence in your abilities."
Meanwhile I wish I could tell my younger self "don't worry, this is actually the worst part of your life and all the people telling you things will never get better are just wrong".
Nowadays, any simple comment can be interpreted on any extreme and everything in between.
Anecdotally, in my experience, this shift is really visible for 3-4 years now. I don't know what changed in these recent years or what caused that shift to become so drastic (again, in my experience). Internet gave a stage to these interpretation even though they were there previously in low volume.
But even on the internet, this wasn't the case until 5-6 years ago, at least not to this level (or so I think).
My pet theory that fits the timeline pretty well is that when Tumblr died and they migrated to Twitter, what was incubated and contained on Tumblr dramatically changed the demographics of twitter and became more mainstream. Most of the last few years of change have been commonplace on tumblr up to that point, but we just kind of laughed and pointed out how ridiculous it was. Now it’s the mainstream
It might be. Personally I never had a Tumblr account, never even visited their website. It was just a name I'd heard. Tumblr was so far out of my life that I didn't even notice that Tumblr died.
a) systems like Twitter giving people dopamine bumps and internet points for strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says and
b) peoples training their brains to have strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says
The start of the Trump era. Trump made the left blind for the extremists on their side. Because criticizing them would mean siding with Trump. Not true of course but that’s what you get when people start to think in absolutes. “You’re either with us or part of the problem.“
I think a lot of the public space toxicity that we now witness is an extreme reaction to Trump. An autoimmune disease of sorts, but in a social context instead of biological one.
Watering down the language a bit, I can see how a reasonable person would be mildly offended if another person told them: "you're living your life improperly".
Which is, ultimately, the received message. Yes you can't get a job in your field and your relationship is trashed, but your 20s are objectively the height of many metrics in your life. So are your 30s. (Unspoken: "I wish I still had the things you do, which you do not see/value. I also want all the things I have accumulated in the time since I was your age.")
So having some other person, typically older and who fancies themselves wiser, who knows not-nearly-enough about your life, opine that you should "enjoy" your current state...can be offensive in many cases!
And of course, as the star of our own autobiographies, we tend to inflate the importance of whatever drama-du-jour we're going through, and fail to take a longer view of things. This is generally the intended message of the speaker, but we often don't hear it that way, and anyway we don't want to be told.
Some messages can only be heard when they are explicitly sought.
Oh no, that's too mild. Things that rise to the level of "offensive" are "violence," not merely "abuse."
Tongue somewhat in cheek, of course, but I do have a friend whose claim to the "Me too" movement was that an older gentleman had called her "young lady" once.
It seems this watering down of language was systemic and intentful. I'd love to know what generations, geographies, and cultures are afflicted most by this.
I don't think the intention was to water down the words' meaning. The intention was to get attention on just how terrible a certain thing was/is in the short run (This idea is abuse/violence!). The long term effects of this is future claims of abuse get ignored in the discourse because the words have been so watered down as to lose their meaning.
The problem is that it seldomly was abuse or violence. These are misplaced or exaggerated words for effect, which is what creates the long term effect. If they're exaggerated, that makes me think this was intentful. If they're misplaced then we've failed in educating a whole group of people on a very fundamental level in a multitude of areas from language to emotional management.
"misplaced or exaggerated for effect" appears to be a natural thing. It's not a new thing, but it definitely seems to be accumulative.
Friends say bands are "awesome", long meetings are "excruciating", guys in mock turtlenecks say products are "magical" or "revolutionary". Boys cry "wolf". What does it all mean?
What words do we choose when the correct words are no longer meaningful? What is the value of a word that describes a situation that almost never happens?
> Friends say bands are "awesome", long meetings are "excruciating", guys in mock turtlenecks say products are "magical" or "revolutionary". Boys cry "wolf". What does it all mean?
Do these exaggerations, or use of flowery language, carry any real world consequences? The words "abuse" and "violence" (and other vernacular that people are using around problems they face) carry consequences under the law, reputational damage, etc... I suspect the people who replace, "So and so said something that offended me" with "So and so said something that was abusive to me" know they're participating in deceptive language that carries real consequences.
I lean in the direction that these folks believe the ends justify the means but I've yet to hear anyone speak in earnest about why they do this. Usually when they explain themselves it involves a lot of imagery and mental gymnastics as well as a wide array of unprovable assumptions you must accept in order to understand their point but always conveniently skips over their language choice.
In fact, there's entire rhetoric designed to avoid this subject called "tone policing" whereby someone is allowed to make outrageous claims because they feel some way about something. It's then on the rest of us to sort out their emotional baggage from the hard facts and produce something from it.
Generally, I've noticed humans will use flowery language when bullshitting, speaking abstractly, or trying to sell something. When we talk about problems we tend to try to be more concise, as being concise lets us address the problem more directly while using flowery language is both deceptive and distracting.
Actually I often wonder if people think about the extremity of their words.
Absurd exaggeration is the norm. That's fine in the form of metaphor (though I still dislike "murder" and "rape" to describe the vagaries of competitive sports and business!) but it's something else when the words can have legal/moral/professional ramifications.
Power gained by the previously-disempowered is rarely handled responsibly. But the powerless should be empowered. I don't know how to get from A to B without collateral damage.
That's a fair point and one I'm willing to accept, but this has been going on for at least half a decade if not longer. I guess at some point, the sort of meta-conversation you and I are having will have to be had.
And ultimately, there will be no reasoned conversation or balanced future. It will just happen, in fits and starts, and we will land in a new semi-stable state of imperfection. Until the next time.
This is just like that article yesterday that called Discord UI colors "harmful". People today love demonizing anything they don't like so that they can lambast it without having to give a well-founded reason why they feel how they do. Nowadays people change language to suit their agenda, thinking that if enough people believe hard enough then changing language can change reality.
The issue that I have seen with this phrase being used is that it is often used in response to a younger person complaining about their current life or aspects of their life. The implication of the phrase is then "well your life sucks, but it's only going to get worse".
For a real life example, I knew someone who was going through some pretty serious depression in high school. Responding to which their counselor said something along the lines of "you shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your life". Which was pretty devastating thing to say to someone.
> For a real life example, I knew someone who was going through some pretty serious depression in high school. Responding to which their counselor said something along the lines of "you shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your life". Which was pretty devastating thing to say to someone.
And, for a lot of people, it's just not true. Maybe I'm really fortunate, but I can't remember a better time in my past life. I think for a lot of people, things generally get better as you age. You definitely get more autonomy, compared to when you were a child and teenager. Financially, you get established in your career, you save a little money, maybe you can even afford a home. Socially, you have better, closer friends as you get older. You can worry less and less about what other people think of you as you get older. I guess this is a little privilege showing, but generally I think my mental wellbeing is much better now than when I was a child or teenager.
High School was the absolute worst point in my life, and that's true for a lot of people I know. You lack autonomy, you're bored, you have no money, you're in a prison-like institution getting bullied for most of your weekday. You're under a lot of pressure and have to worry about grades and behaving the way adults want you to behave. It sucked! Who are these insane people where high school was the best time of their life?
As somebody went through multiple evictions as a teen, I agree 100%.
If you don't come from a stable household your teenage years are going to be absolutely horrible. You're going to know enough to understand that the adults around you should do things like pay bills, but they just don't want to. They'd rather buy new cars and get them repoed.
I make an absurd amount of money now, and I'm grateful every time I pay my rent. Honest to God, if I could change one thing about the educational system I get rid of the idea that your parents are responsible to pay for your college.
If you're coming from a bad household this simply isn't going to work, but you'd be the most likely to benefit from a scholarship or financial aid. What ends up happening is this gets locked behind your parents doing basic things like filling out forms, but they're just incapable of doing it.
I can't put in words how devastating dropping out of college due to this stupid system was. Through the magic of programming I was able to still establish a great career, but when you come from a broken home you're just going to take hit after hit after hit.
I often need to distance myself from what I guess normal people struggle with. I'll see something stupid on Reddit like a man in his late 20s complaining that his parents want him to get a job, and I have to stop myself from screaming at my computer.
I agree with others that "abuse" is a bit over the top, but I had people tell me that a few times, when I was in high school (never before or since).
I don't know WTF was wrong with the rest of those people's lives, but, as someone approaching 40, ages ~12-18 were the worst part of my life and it's not even a close call. Everything before and after was much better. Working mediocre low-paying jobs was much better. College was like a vacation. Adult life is way better. Being a younger kid was way better. And I had a really normal HS experience, stable home life, et c., so it's not like I was being badly bullied or my parents were going through a divorce or something. Those years are just awful (school's about 70% of the problem with it, I'd say, and the other 30% is hormones)
When the odd suicidal ideation popped into my head, or if I was just way down in the dumps (both are pretty common for teenagers) the (absofuckinglutely wrong!) suggestion that things would only get worse was... not helpful.
Reality is that most learn to cope with life a lot better as they grow older.
My life objectively sucks more now. I have way less free time, and am under harsher constraints. But I am saddled with way less depression and anxiety. I am enjoying life more than ever. I don't go to sleep crying or ruminating every night anymore.
People saying "well your life sucks but it's only going to get worse" are inadvertently being mean and unhelpful. I can imagine probably offing myself, had I heard that advice at the wrong moment growing up.
It didn't get worse. It got better, even though the circumstances got worse, because my ability to handle them got much better.
Weird. I've never heard an adult tell a high schooler that it's the best time in their life. Usually people tell them it doesn't really matter (which also doesn't really help).
Great point. I think it can definitely feel abusive to be told how to feel. It makes it feel like there is something wrong with you for feeling differently, or adds anxiety to change your feelings.
So much anxiety in my life is about thinking Im wasting years, not just comparing my life experience to someone else's but comparing it to everyone else's. I wonder if this is an american saying, notably from "It wad the summer of 69"
"I think what’s really important for emotional well-being is to know that your future is secure, to achieve the luxury of not worrying about your future. When you’re younger, there’s a lot to worry about. I sometimes tell my undergrads: When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. A lot of younger people have high rates of distress."
Still sounds hyperbolic. "Form of abuse," is pretty ridiculous. It's like saying, "you are assaulting me with your words."
A better phrase from a person who wants to be taken seriously would be, "that can be naive," or "that's ignoring other people's burdens," "that's not always accurate," etc. "Form of abuse," is just over the top in my opinion.
He's certainly not doing anybody any favors hinting that they are the victim of something (abuse) when they are clearly not in his context.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
Please don't single out gratuitous provocations in an article and then copy them into the thread to complain about them. It doesn't lead to interesting discussion. Best to just leave the provocation in its native habit and find something interesting (e.g. deeper or more surprising) to talk about. If you don't find anything like that, there are plenty of other articles to read.
At age 20 or so, I read a quote in a book (on day trading, IIRC) that went something like: "Master your emotions, or they will master you."
After thinking about it, I realized that despite identifying as a logical-thinking individual, I was nevertheless at the mercy of the more primitive parts of my brain. Sometimes totally, but pretty much all executive functions were influenced by it to a large degree. That might be fine, but my limbic system tended to make poor decisions; ones that my more conscious brain would have to pay the price for later. It's also no match for the brains of people not in emotional mode, and would be taken advantage of by things like appeals to emotion in advertising, politics, and rhetoric. I decided my internal caveman was not my friend, and took steps to sideline his vote in decision-making.
Probably the same as changing any behavior: First try to notice when you're doing the thing you don't want to be doing, then try to abort when you find yourself doing it. The time between "start" and "abort" will keep getting shorter, and eventually you'll not do it in the first place.
I settled on the triune brain model as a good-enough approximation for my needs in relation to this (whether it's factually accurate is another issue). I would then categorize my thoughts and subsequent actions based on that model (mainly limbic vs. neocortex). It's pretty easy to tell them apart with some high-level introspection. Then, I'd short-circuit any emotional thinking once I spotted myself engaging in it, and injecting rational thought into those times when the limbic system would normally be in control. I'd spent decades of life not doing this, so it took a long time for this to not feel weird, but eventually it became natural.
Once the big reactive emotions (e.g. anger) were dealt with, I turned attention to the more subtle influences. I think there's a middle ground of thoughts that are a more complex or a mix of emotional and rational (think things like national pride, identity, career progression). That's a harder job and a more involved topic. In fact, I can't say I've completely got that done, or even fully mastered the first part. The caveman is always there, of course, and perhaps the best you can hope for is restraining him.
This seems weird and bad. Emotion and "reason" aren't two ends of a spectrum. You likely aren't any more logical or less emotional now than you were before.
I believe you about better control over how you engage with your emotional responses but damn dude. If you were just getting too mad at stuff they got therapy for that you don't hafta roll your own psychic amputations these days.
> If you were just getting too mad at stuff they got therapy for that
CBT being the most popular kind. In CBT you detect negative emotional reasoning, categorise it, and refute it by coming up with a more rational response.
This is such an important realization. And when you have it and then think back in your life to the failed relationships you've had (personal and professional) it's usually very staggering the degree to which your caveman sabotaged you.
Learn this lesson young, and you will save yourself decades of squandered time.
Most people never appreciate the degree to which their emotions sabotage their lives.
If I ever got something beneficial out of meditation, it was that feelings and thoughts come and go and do not have to necessarily be listened to. I didn't realise this until I was in my early 20s, and looking back, there were so many regretful moments as a result of just doing whatever feelings and thoughts dictated I should do in any given moment.
Being able to view your thoughts and feelings in an abstract, manageable way is incredibly important.
Yep meditation is great at helping you laugh at the absurdity of your thoughts and the realization they're totally fleeting along with the emotions they bring. Now, I can just think to myself that emotion will be gone in a few hours/days/etc. and I don't need to obsess about it, just let it be. It's absolutely true too.
The phrase, “This too, shall pass,” can be bittersweet at times, but also comforting. Although some feelings can be so intense that it is difficult to think thoughts that move me back to baseline, the clock keeps ticking and new experiences inevitably flood in. One thing I think about a lot is that we generally can’t “remember” what pain feels like, which helps sometimes.
Whole heartedly agree with this post. I didn't start meditating until my mid-20s and am just grateful to have discovered the practice at all.
Instead of swimming in your thoughts/emotions all day, meditation teaches you how temporary and fleeting they are. This helps you detach from them and not take your own thoughts so personally (if that makes sense). It's like you have a 50,000 foot view above your thoughts as they come and go.
> If I ever got something beneficial out of meditation
Don't do meditation to get anything beneficial at all. You do meditation to let go of all of that altogether and (ultimately) prepare yourself for death.
Imo there's a strong tendency for people working in tech/business or with high ambition in general to suppress their emotions as they affect the decision making.
However, I'd rather make suboptimal decisions if that means a richer life, deeper connections and a stronger sense of wonder. Trying to be as logical, rational as possible makes life dull and mechanical.
In the end as Kierkegaard said, "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.".
Even if you approach life logically, and see it as a problem, the question remains: what does the solution look like? Money in the bank, active sex life, dozens of adoring grand children, popularity, achievement, status, a long life?
These ideas enter our rational faculties from below.
They are the caveman's goals, and the rational layer of our being is just a means to that end.
There's a difference between suppression and realizing you have a choice on whether to follow that emotion. Obviously, suppression is bad but so is allowing yourself to get completely wrapped up in it. You can let that emotion just float there in the "background" and continue on.
Kierkegaard's idea of "repetition" actually speaks very directly to the topic of this larger discussion. Many ways to interpret his writings here, and I am no trained philosopher, but he seems to write about how repetition is not truly possible - that encountering a once-new thing for a subsequent time is tainted by recollection - dulling the experience essentially. I think he also suggests that cultivating a certain mindset can re-novelize life but I am thinking not many achieve that.
I debated where to attach a comment and decided that here would be as valid as elsewhere in the nearby tree. But, some of my response is more broad than to your comment...
I think that the ancestor and related messages imply various false dichotomies of logical+rational versus rich+emotional, problem solving versus experiencing, or a more ambiguous "spectrum". Likewise, you somewhat conflate several: novel versus familiar, pure versus tainted, bright or rich versus dull. These are not clear basis vectors of some abstract space but more confusing and muddled aspects of some perceptual space with an unknown number of dimensions shaped by the first person witness.
In the spirit of the broader topic, I think part of aging and becoming a master of your emotions is to recognize the imprecision and false allure of these metaphors. Ignorance is not bliss; it can be bliss or fear. Novelty is not wonder; it can be wonder or horror. And of course, ignorance or novelty can be boring or desensitizing too! Your state and perspective can drastically change the subjective experience, as can any number of external factors omitted from such trite labels.
The notion of not being able to repeat something is also embedded in how I've seen people, without intending any direct reference to the Thomas Wolfe novel, often use the adage "you can never go home again". I would say most people seem to mean that the observer/traveler has changed and cannot experience home the same way, though of course the place/inhabitants and relationships also change. The whole "home" experience is fleeting or even illusory. Conversely, someone can find "home" wherever they go, if they can establish sufficient conditions. I think Wolfe was aware of all of these factors.
Ironically, emotion as a biological system seems to be all about repetition and heuristics for prompting behaviors given the "same" conditions. And it's not just emotion. So much of perception and cognition is based in an illusion of permanence and identity for abstract concepts. Concepts that don't necessarily exist in the actual chaotic environment within which we are living.
Yes. An easy observation to make when the highly rational and logical person in the room gets angry. Particularly when they're angered by others non-rationality. As if being angry is a rational response or a useful one.
I think we read the same book. Probably "Trading in the Zone" or one of those. I never ended up day trading much, but I sure as hell got that message loud and clear.
"Mastering your emotions" if you mean, controlling your emotions, is not balanced or healthy. Mastering your emotions means listening to them as a critical feedback to your environment and then rationally controlling your response.
Rational thought is complimentary to emotional thought. Rational thought is slow, reflexive, and highly focused. Emotional thought is affective; it is your mind telling you how something is affecting you.
E.g. Anger tells you some boundary has been violated. It's the rational part that allows you to analyze that feeling and respond appropriately (telling someone to back off or getting a snack because your blood sugars are low)
My entirely unscientific theory is that like other cells, we're born with a limited number of fucks in our body.
When we're young, we (instinctively, subconsciously) feel like our fucks reserves are plentiful, so we give a fuck about a lot of stuff.
As we get older, our reservoir of fucks gets progressively depleted. The fucks are rarer, so we give a fuck less and less often. I've recently turned 40 and I can definitely feel this in myself; just like recovery from workouts takes a little longer than when I was 20, I don't give a fuck about things so easily.
By the time you're officially old, you're almost out of fucks, so it's not like you don't give a fuck because you don't want to, but because it's more difficult physically (harvesting of the last fucks takes more energy, because biology).
I think what you're describing is more down to desensitisation through exposure to stressful environments.
When you're younger smaller problems seem larger because you've not been desensitised to larger problems. As you progress through life you generally experience greater stress and thus the smaller problems feel smaller. You could look at it like desensitisation to capsicum, salt, violence or pornography.
That's preposterous! I'm sticking to my "fucks are finite and biologically limited" theory. I'll use the TED talk to promote my upcoming self-help book around this mind-blowing new theory.
Gladwell tends to pick up on interesting and plausible sounding assertions that are often poorly backed up by actual research and weave compellingly written narrative yarns out of them.
Disillusionment is real. Before you have achieved success you think that it is really important to succeed. Once you have succeeded, or see other people succeed, you realize that some of the happiest people are not "successful".
This is a great example of why defining of one's goals is important. To be one of the "happiest people" would be a worthy goal, but the young don't think of the game of life like that.
The thing with babies is that evolution comes in play here, and they often cry for no (internal) reason whatsoever... More crying = more parent attention = better rate of survival. I wonder when does this effect cut off.
There’s nothing funnier than seeing your toddler harmlessly fall, he thinks no one saw it, he goes on about his day, then a few seconds later makes eye contact with you and only then starts crying.
Conversely, they must be in an almost constant state of wonder. When was the last time you or I saw a new color for the first time? Their threshold for amazement and "this is literally the best thing I've seen in my entire life" is also much lower!
The people who are most susceptible to this are in fact disproportionately young and inexperienced. Virtually nobody I know from meatspace behaves the way virtually everybody on Twitter seems to behave, for example.
Reminds me of the theory I read somewhere - we all have so many words in us and when we use them up, we die. Think it might have been Vonnegut but can't find the source at the moment.
Once you start to see how the world works, and how complicated things are, you're a lot less likely to fire off about some specific issue.
Radicalism is the posture of those who want to externalize all the side effects of their utopianism, and when you're older it gets harder to not see second-order effects for what they are.
That doesn't matter, most people don't bump into the imperfections, but some inevitably do, and you can't fault those for getting angry, especially if there was a possibility for another option if the "perfect" system didn't stand in the way.
That, combined with the wisdom one gains from having spent many fucks on the wrong things. When you examine the fucks you gave 10 or 20 years ago, you realize how clueless you were.
Careful, your radical theory could spawn a new cottage industry of snake oils! Fuck restorative juice blends and creams, fuck focusing crystals, a Gwyneth Paltrow book on giving clean fucks so as to not overly deplete your limited reserve of fuck giving.
This is hilarious and yet right on the money in some way.
As you get older, you start to see that everything is the same and goes through cycles. The important stuff of my childhood (ex: having clothes that were sewhar fashionable), becomes irrelevant. Who cares if I'm wearing the same style of sandals for over 20 years now? You start to focus on what's more important to you. F** are reserved for important matters like arguing on HN about the superiority of Linux :).
When you see a child have a meltdown over not having their favorite bath towel available, you start to see how widening your scope means less care for minor problems. I have no time to worry about those things as I have bigger problems (working on marriage, work due dates, educating my kid...etc). It makes one wonder how chill an immortal being would be after milennia.
The last thing you wrote is something I indirectly think about quite a lot. Imagine a place (call it heaven if you want) where time and death don’t exist. What could you possibly care about?
Caring doesn't need to be negative only. IMHO You can care about love even if you're immortal, and you care about losing it even though you went through it all bazillion times already, as each person is unique and the feelings you lose are still lost and the loss is still painful.
Babylon 5 had a neat episode (spoilers) where the first living being (in his corporeal form) has a conversation with one of the human commanders and says something about love being a remarkable gift/illusion for mortals that they should treasure.
This is addressed really interestingly in The Good Place. It starts off looking like a very by-the-book sitcom though, so you do need to wait it out a bit.
It’s a philosophy class masquerading as a sitcom. I liked the show a lot. And props to them for ending the show when it needed to. They could have dragged it out but didn’t.
In the novel Permutation City by Greg Egan, people deal with this by editing their memory every once in a while so that every experience feels fresh. One guy even edits his personality so he becomes obsessed with something for a random amount of time and then abruptly loses interest.
As I often as I remember I adopt the perspective of someone who's 14,000 years old.
I don't know why I haven't died, and at this point I don't expect to at anytime in the future.
But I don't know I won't - so I'm still careful, and grateful.
But I don't let things bother me, because I've seen it before. And all my plans are long-term, because centuries to me are the same as quarters for you.
It seems crazy, but it's really changed how I think. I got the idea after watching the incredible movie, "The Man From Earth"
My crass response to people being finicky or indecisive about dinner plans is, “You do realize that whatever we pick is just going to be shit out by tomorrow right?”
This is fun. You often people say “death gives life meaning” which is absurd, as if the meat and potatoes of day-to—day obligations, chores, hobbies and friendships are influenced in any way by the fact that the chain of experiences will eventually end. I don’t imagine that I’m 14ky old, but I do make decisions as if I might never die, and if I do, I try to keep in mind the implications for my as-yet-nonexistent grandchildren.
No way, you guys really like this movie? It's a good idea, terribly executed. The worst acting I have seen in a long time, gaping plot holes that makes you shake your head in disbelief. I was very disappointed.
> Imagine a place (call it heaven if you want) where time and death don’t exist. What could you possibly care about?
Mathematics!
plushpuffin (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132468) mentions Greg Egan's Permutation city, and this sort of question is one of his main themes. In Diaspora, Egan explores many other possible answers; my favourite of the possible answers there, and I suspect also his, is that eventually one would occupy oneself with mathematics in such a place.
Apologies for incorrectly including "Mathematics!" in the quote; it was meant to be the first line of my answer, but I only noticed my formatting error after the edit window had closed. The post should have read:
> Imagine a place (call it heaven if you want) where time and death don’t exist. What could you possibly care about?
Mathematics!
plushpuffin (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132468) mentions Greg Egan's Permutation City, and this sort of question is one of his main themes. In Diaspora, Egan explores many other possible answers; my favourite of the possible answers there, and I suspect also his, is that eventually one would occupy oneself with mathematics in such a place.
I read somewhere that because people don't live that long, we don't have a collective memory of previous disasters or pandemics (anyone who was alive today during the 1918 pandemic wouldn't really remember it), so human history simply happens in cycles or waves. The underlying conflict is the same, but a new set of humans deal with it with the technological tools of the day.
Simply put, if the human lifespan were longer, we might give less fucks about natural disasters because we've seen them before.
> I read somewhere that because people don't live that long, we don't have a collective memory of previous disasters or pandemics (anyone who was alive today during the 1918 pandemic wouldn't really remember it)
I’m splitting hairs, but aren’t these two separate problems?
If I lived 1,000 years, I’m not sure I’d be able to remember things that happened 200 years ago super well. I can’t remember things that happened 20 years ago very well.
The assumption that I'm going under (I assume others as well) is that if we can halt aging, we might be able to do something with memory as well.
Although I kinda personally believe (more on hope than any technology being available) that we can move to a non biological medium with nearly infinite storage, speed of light processing speed, effective immortality...etc. The only needs would be entertainment and energy.
Of course, we have zero idea if that is even possible.
I discovered a similar thought the first time in the amazing science fiction novel Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling:
"Lindsay glanced at one wall and was paralyzed at the sight of his own clan's founder, Malcolm Lindsay. As a child, the dead pioneer's face, leering in ancestral wisdom from the tops of dressers and bookshelves, had filled him with dread. Now he realized with a painful leap of insight how young the man had been. Dead at seventy. The whole habitat had been slammed up in frantic haste by people scarcely more than children. He began laughing hysterically.
'It's a joke!' he shouted. The laughter was melting his head, breaking up a logjam of thought in little stabbing pangs.
[...]
'It's a joke,' Lindsay said. His tongue was loose now and the words gushed free. 'This is unbelievable. These poor fools had no idea. How could they? They were dead before they had a chance to see! What's five years to us, what's ten, a hundred—'
"
Less about the energy to give fucks and more about having better things to give fucks about. Personally at least, I used to give a fuck about every damn thing - from the slightest perceived insult to the way rice is cooked. These days I have better/bigger things to give a fuck about. I brush off even real insults and eat two day old rice just fine.
I’ve seen a lot of people age and slowly lose the ability to control their emotions as well, so Im not exactly sure what’s the ratio of bettering or worsening of emotion control.
But generally I agree with the idea that that wisdom collects with time and experiences lived and so emotional expense is better controlled along with aging.
From my experince, at a smillar age (41), I reserve my fucks for more important events so your take on fucks fits me quite well, I generally give a lot less of them.
I'm not sure it's a discrete limited number of fucks, just the novelty wears off - after so many heartbreaks, surprises good and bad - you know you've seen something similar before and they slowly loose their power.
The thing about getting older is that you come with terms with the fact that you have limited control over life. You have only control on yourself, and this not absolute because you may get a decease that's pretty random, although your lifestyle heavily affects your well being. Outside of yourself everything else is kinda out of your influence. It's good to keep tabs on what's going on with the world in an attempt to better prepare for hardship, but the more you let go the happier you become.
Another way to put it is that as you get older you start prioritizing things better that are of value to you as your time in existence is being depleted. Less time means more focus, which results in less fucks.
Lol, that's both a hilarious and great model for sure.
But I wonder, it seems to me doomers lost their fuck faster. Is it because they have fewer initial fucks? Or is it because they lose fuck overtime even if they don't a fuck about something? Or every time everybody else gives a fuck a doomer gives two?
I would like to think of it as a Bias term. The older I become the larger the Bias and the fewer fucks I give. I wish I could have performed some transfer learning to my younger self, his life would have been much easier.
I respectfully disagree.
As a reluctant member of the "older individuals" I too find myself giving a boatload less fucks than I used to, but the main reasons are (in no particular order):
1. I have got my crippling Generalized Anxiety Disorder under control
2. I have realized that I used to give way too many fucks about shit that didn't matter at all, and it was not worth it and actually detrimental
Mind you, those 2 are highly correlated and of interdependent causation.
What got me here:
Therapy didn't help.
Manson's book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck" helped quite a bit, but was not "the thing".
Articles on "Don't be a victim...." "Don't play the victim...." and similar helped.
What helped immensely is to start blogging daily, and more often than daily, about the events in my life, my thinking, my reactions starting from the points of view that:
A) I am accountable for what happens to me
B) I am 100% wrong when something unpleasant happens to me
And that, in the course of a few month, changed my life in tangible manners.
While I am not a snowflake, I am a special case: I started low, very low; and - IMHO - I have come a long way in the Depression/Anxiety/Being_a_loser scale.
I do believe that to some degree something similar happens to most everyone who doesn't start for the same ultra-low point as me, with time we learn that when young we were wrong to give too many fucks about too many things.
But guess what? Giving way too many fucks about too many things is good for:
Business: Facebook, iPhone & Co
Politicians: from left to right
Religions: all of them (except for The Dude)
And that's why the messagings that we are bombarded with aim at reinforcing giving too many fucks about too many things (aka Anxiety) and the messagings aimed at kids/teenagers aim to create and instill Anxiety.
> What helped immensely is to start blogging daily, and more often than daily, about the events in my life, my thinking, my reactions starting from the points of view that:
> A) I am accountable for what happens to me
> B) I am 100% wrong when something unpleasant happens to me
> And that, in the course of a few month, changed my life in tangible manners.
And also:
I am reading about Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) specifically:
How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything-yes, Anything!
Something unpleasant happens: I do the analysis from the starting point that I am 100% wrong. Of course as I go along, most often, I realize that - while partially responsible - I am not 100% wrong, but there is some wrongdoing on my part, if not just in the way I reacted/responded, and/or the depth/breadth of my reaction/responses.
For instance, when Anxiety flares up due to some trigger, I might ruminate and have insomnia.
Ever ask why? Well... it's about giving way too many fucks. Shit happened. So? Who's responsible for ruminating and losing sleep? Me, myself and I. 100% my bad. Of course I am not responsible for the event, but I am responsible for letting it make me ruminating / insomniac.
And seeking an external solution like meds, or therapy, or a therapist or whatnot it's just a copout. And if taken to an extreme it might develop into victim mentality and hence a self fulfilling prophecy.
This works for me. I am not blaming any victims out there, at times I have mentioned this personal attitude of mine only to be accused of "blaming victims the world over". NOPE. This is about me.
I am no martyr either, but I see out there, and I was guilty myself, to use as a starting point the stance that I was either right or immune to any finger-pointing. Starting from "I am 100% wrong" is just a different stance, a different starting point. Needs not to be the end of it, the process of reasoning is the journey the leads to bettering oneself.
Hey that was fun. I first read your page, and based on descriptions, tried to predict my result. Took test, result was close - same category(row), but other side.(column). Neato.
How big a role does survivorship bias play?
It seemed like in the case of chimpanzees the article sort of implies that the effect "nice and more self-controlled chimpanzees live longer", mattered too?
I wonder what portion of "older people being more emotionally balanced" can be explained by more emotionally balanced people surviving longer in Western society?
Sounds like something somebody will have tried to quantify at least in terms of the order of magnitude?
I experienced my worst emotionally stressfull events at age of 39 and 55. The latter was harder, and the trauma is not really healed after three years. Everything that you can say shortly about feelings and age is going to be badly oversimplified.
And we've "been around the block" (i.e. cycles of life, relationships, career, health, ...) a few times. We've become a bit more familiar with the patterns, and familiarity reduces fear and anxiety.
Do they really? show them something foreign or a new technology and ask them how they feel, you will see how in control of their emotions they really are.
Natural selection. At a young age, some people know how to control their feelings, others don't. The ones who can't then die from road rage or similar, leaving only the ones with at least a modicum of self control in the older age groups.
How many people do you think die from road rage (or similar) annually? How do you account for all the people who couldn’t handle their emotions when young and now can when older?
Nah, natural selection sometimes works slowly, and it's not infallible, it's all about probabilities. Old people who are angry throws a wrench in the original statement, not this explanation of it.
I think it is survivorship bias, those who couldn't control their feelings were more likely self-destruct through a variety of direct and indirect mechanisms.
Personally I just don't give a shit. I still get upset the same way as I did decades ago, but it's just not worth my time and energy to get all up in arms about most things that are upsetting to me.
On most things I either know nothing I will do or say will make a positive impact, or I know the issue will take care of itself or someone else is taking care of it, just not right at this very moment. So why bother. I have better things to do with my life. Like lie down on my couch and binge watch Golden Girls.
I make an exception on things endangering the well being of my wife and kids.
Because when you’re young, your feelings control you. So you end up doing and saying things that don’t actually serve your own interests, or those of people around you. Also because when you’re young you don’t yet know that certain displays of, or acting out of, impulsive emotions, isn’t acceptable in our society.
So over time, to stop fucking your own life up, your progressively learn to say less, to hold your tongue, to decide later, to consider things from the perspective of others, to reserve and hold back. To give things time and think before acting or talking. To give people the benefit of the doubt. You earn that things are likely to change so there’s less reason to respond in an extreme manner to right now.
You learn that you’re not as important as you think you were when you were younger.
I think it's simple: Perspective, and emotional fatigue.
The first time <insert good thing> happens to you, you might be overwhelmed with excitement and joy. The 85th time, not so much. Hopefully you still appreciate it, but for the same dramatic response, the reward center needs more. Anything that happens to you 85 times isn't special enough to be life-changing, by definition.
The first time <insert bad thing> happens to you, you might be crushed. By the 5th time it happens to you, or you've seen it happen to others, you are just kind of immune. You know bad things happen, and you either decide to move forward or you do not.
Interestingly though: seeing someone else experience the now-banal-to-you positive thing can be it's own reward. Watching a child's first taste of ice cream is somehow magical. Or a puppy's first experience of snow.
And we try to have patience for the corresponding first-negative experiences too. A child who does not get exactly what they wanted for dinner, or who must go home from the park earlier than he or she might like...
(Examples above intentionally light-weight. There are real bad things that happen to people, but the level of emotional energy elicited by the trivialities can be enormous!)
If this were the whole story, it would mean that a man who had been in a coma his whole life up to 60 would have the same emotional control as a little kid. For example, he would cry at losing a board game. That's very hard to believe.
I'm pretty sure the difference between old people and young people is mostly just energy. Old people can't feel intense emotions for the same reason they can't run a marathon. They just get fatigued too easily.
That's an interesting idea. I wonder if there is any data on that sort of thing.
Anecdotally, though much less dramatically: When my Mom switched from glasses to contact lenses (and received an improved prescription), her sense of happiness and wonder at being able to see the details of tree leaves, etc, is something that I still remember a few decades later.
One of the interesting results from psychology is that emotions are a complicated feedback loop from stimulus, around through the body, back to the feeling, but critically involving bodily response, not just states of the brain. I've personally experienced "feeling anxious" simply because my heart was beating too quickly for purely physiological reasons. (I've had some heart troubles.) Once I addressed those reasons, the anxiety faded with it. This is a handwave in the direction of this research and ideas, not an explanation of it; consult the web if you're interested in more.
I propose something that neither the article nor anyone else is in the comments so far, which is that we age, our bodies simply get less physical about the emotions. It makes it easier to be more level if your body is literally being more level, and the aforementioned feedback loop is literally weaker. Everything else gets weaker in old age, why not the physiological strength of emotions, too?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 298 ms ] threadBeing married at least has a tangible causal link: support in health-related emergencies.
Enough reasons to be chill just about everything
> Total testosterone levels fall at an average of 1.6% per year whilst free and bioavailable levels fall by 2%–3% per year ... [t]wenty percent of men aged over 60 have total testosterone levels below the normal range and the figure rises to 50% in those aged over 80.
I know there's been a lot of pushback on the idea that testosterone is just a masculine hormone, but the link between testosterone and aggression [2] seems pretty well-accepted. So it seems reasonable that declining testosterone might make you more even-keeled.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2544367/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Aggression_and_cr...
> The relationship between testosterone and aggression may also function indirectly, as it has been proposed that testosterone does not amplify tendencies towards aggression but rather amplifies whatever tendencies will allow an individual to maintain social status when challenged. In most animals, aggression is the means of maintaining social status. However, humans have multiple ways of obtaining social status. This could explain why some studies find a link between testosterone and pro-social behaviour if pro-social behaviour is rewarded with social status. Thus the link between testosterone and aggression and violence is due to these being rewarded with social status.
I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".
It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it.
I have to disagree. My grandparents often have great perspectives on life situations that they readily share when relevant to the people around them. No one sees it as rude, and if they do, it’s usually because the advice hits a little too close to home. Like “when I went through my divorce…”
The truly insightful manage to prompt you to think without explicitly telling you to do so.
(And are sometimes wrong. People can in fact be living in a truly dismal present, whatever their age.)
"When I was your age, I didn't appreciate certain things so I'm pointing them out to you" is really different from "this is the best time of your life" which is a statement an external observer is just not equipped to make about someone else's life.
Not really. It's notional advice, offered in a spirit of kindness. You don't have to like it, but labeling it 'extremely rude at best' is absolutely infantile.
I think it’s pretty fair to criticize that generations lack of forethought but not so much wealth hoarding.
ok?
That's roughly equivalent to putting away $150 a month.
Do you think $266,400 will buy a house?
Do you think $13,900 will buy a house?
I understand that you can divide $266,400 over any interval that's convenient, but I don't see how that relates to my point or the facts.
I'm sure there's legitimate experience behind the feelings but it's not a good use of this site to allow them to turn into generational flamewar, let alone violent rants.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it looks like you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines a fair bit, e.g.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27075363
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27048414
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045856
Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart? We'd appreciate it.
I've been guessing wrong lately, it seems.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
As an aside, I find your choice of pronoun fascinating and enlightening.
I'm not the only person who works on HN!
Using euphemism or calling it something better then it is is exactly as infantile as exaggerating. And if is lie too.
The author just appears to use complete hyperbole to get a reaction from his students and readers. Not to be taken seriously.
In this case, it would be the improper use of your life experience giving advice that causes more harm than good.
Maybe "misuse" would have been better suiting here.
Anecdotally, in my experience, this shift is really visible for 3-4 years now. I don't know what changed in these recent years or what caused that shift to become so drastic (again, in my experience). Internet gave a stage to these interpretation even though they were there previously in low volume.
But even on the internet, this wasn't the case until 5-6 years ago, at least not to this level (or so I think).
a) systems like Twitter giving people dopamine bumps and internet points for strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says and
b) peoples training their brains to have strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says
From my experience, something changed around 2017 and now Twitter is a war zone.
Watering down the language a bit, I can see how a reasonable person would be mildly offended if another person told them: "you're living your life improperly".
Which is, ultimately, the received message. Yes you can't get a job in your field and your relationship is trashed, but your 20s are objectively the height of many metrics in your life. So are your 30s. (Unspoken: "I wish I still had the things you do, which you do not see/value. I also want all the things I have accumulated in the time since I was your age.")
So having some other person, typically older and who fancies themselves wiser, who knows not-nearly-enough about your life, opine that you should "enjoy" your current state...can be offensive in many cases!
And of course, as the star of our own autobiographies, we tend to inflate the importance of whatever drama-du-jour we're going through, and fail to take a longer view of things. This is generally the intended message of the speaker, but we often don't hear it that way, and anyway we don't want to be told.
Some messages can only be heard when they are explicitly sought.
Tongue somewhat in cheek, of course, but I do have a friend whose claim to the "Me too" movement was that an older gentleman had called her "young lady" once.
It seems this watering down of language was systemic and intentful. I'd love to know what generations, geographies, and cultures are afflicted most by this.
Friends say bands are "awesome", long meetings are "excruciating", guys in mock turtlenecks say products are "magical" or "revolutionary". Boys cry "wolf". What does it all mean?
What words do we choose when the correct words are no longer meaningful? What is the value of a word that describes a situation that almost never happens?
Do these exaggerations, or use of flowery language, carry any real world consequences? The words "abuse" and "violence" (and other vernacular that people are using around problems they face) carry consequences under the law, reputational damage, etc... I suspect the people who replace, "So and so said something that offended me" with "So and so said something that was abusive to me" know they're participating in deceptive language that carries real consequences.
I lean in the direction that these folks believe the ends justify the means but I've yet to hear anyone speak in earnest about why they do this. Usually when they explain themselves it involves a lot of imagery and mental gymnastics as well as a wide array of unprovable assumptions you must accept in order to understand their point but always conveniently skips over their language choice.
In fact, there's entire rhetoric designed to avoid this subject called "tone policing" whereby someone is allowed to make outrageous claims because they feel some way about something. It's then on the rest of us to sort out their emotional baggage from the hard facts and produce something from it.
Generally, I've noticed humans will use flowery language when bullshitting, speaking abstractly, or trying to sell something. When we talk about problems we tend to try to be more concise, as being concise lets us address the problem more directly while using flowery language is both deceptive and distracting.
Absurd exaggeration is the norm. That's fine in the form of metaphor (though I still dislike "murder" and "rape" to describe the vagaries of competitive sports and business!) but it's something else when the words can have legal/moral/professional ramifications.
Power gained by the previously-disempowered is rarely handled responsibly. But the powerless should be empowered. I don't know how to get from A to B without collateral damage.
And ultimately, there will be no reasoned conversation or balanced future. It will just happen, in fits and starts, and we will land in a new semi-stable state of imperfection. Until the next time.
For a real life example, I knew someone who was going through some pretty serious depression in high school. Responding to which their counselor said something along the lines of "you shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your life". Which was pretty devastating thing to say to someone.
And, for a lot of people, it's just not true. Maybe I'm really fortunate, but I can't remember a better time in my past life. I think for a lot of people, things generally get better as you age. You definitely get more autonomy, compared to when you were a child and teenager. Financially, you get established in your career, you save a little money, maybe you can even afford a home. Socially, you have better, closer friends as you get older. You can worry less and less about what other people think of you as you get older. I guess this is a little privilege showing, but generally I think my mental wellbeing is much better now than when I was a child or teenager.
High School was the absolute worst point in my life, and that's true for a lot of people I know. You lack autonomy, you're bored, you have no money, you're in a prison-like institution getting bullied for most of your weekday. You're under a lot of pressure and have to worry about grades and behaving the way adults want you to behave. It sucked! Who are these insane people where high school was the best time of their life?
If you don't come from a stable household your teenage years are going to be absolutely horrible. You're going to know enough to understand that the adults around you should do things like pay bills, but they just don't want to. They'd rather buy new cars and get them repoed.
I make an absurd amount of money now, and I'm grateful every time I pay my rent. Honest to God, if I could change one thing about the educational system I get rid of the idea that your parents are responsible to pay for your college.
If you're coming from a bad household this simply isn't going to work, but you'd be the most likely to benefit from a scholarship or financial aid. What ends up happening is this gets locked behind your parents doing basic things like filling out forms, but they're just incapable of doing it.
I can't put in words how devastating dropping out of college due to this stupid system was. Through the magic of programming I was able to still establish a great career, but when you come from a broken home you're just going to take hit after hit after hit.
I often need to distance myself from what I guess normal people struggle with. I'll see something stupid on Reddit like a man in his late 20s complaining that his parents want him to get a job, and I have to stop myself from screaming at my computer.
I don't know WTF was wrong with the rest of those people's lives, but, as someone approaching 40, ages ~12-18 were the worst part of my life and it's not even a close call. Everything before and after was much better. Working mediocre low-paying jobs was much better. College was like a vacation. Adult life is way better. Being a younger kid was way better. And I had a really normal HS experience, stable home life, et c., so it's not like I was being badly bullied or my parents were going through a divorce or something. Those years are just awful (school's about 70% of the problem with it, I'd say, and the other 30% is hormones)
When the odd suicidal ideation popped into my head, or if I was just way down in the dumps (both are pretty common for teenagers) the (absofuckinglutely wrong!) suggestion that things would only get worse was... not helpful.
My life objectively sucks more now. I have way less free time, and am under harsher constraints. But I am saddled with way less depression and anxiety. I am enjoying life more than ever. I don't go to sleep crying or ruminating every night anymore.
People saying "well your life sucks but it's only going to get worse" are inadvertently being mean and unhelpful. I can imagine probably offing myself, had I heard that advice at the wrong moment growing up.
It didn't get worse. It got better, even though the circumstances got worse, because my ability to handle them got much better.
"I think what’s really important for emotional well-being is to know that your future is secure, to achieve the luxury of not worrying about your future. When you’re younger, there’s a lot to worry about. I sometimes tell my undergrads: When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. A lot of younger people have high rates of distress."
A better phrase from a person who wants to be taken seriously would be, "that can be naive," or "that's ignoring other people's burdens," "that's not always accurate," etc. "Form of abuse," is just over the top in my opinion.
He's certainly not doing anybody any favors hinting that they are the victim of something (abuse) when they are clearly not in his context.
Please don't single out gratuitous provocations in an article and then copy them into the thread to complain about them. It doesn't lead to interesting discussion. Best to just leave the provocation in its native habit and find something interesting (e.g. deeper or more surprising) to talk about. If you don't find anything like that, there are plenty of other articles to read.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
After thinking about it, I realized that despite identifying as a logical-thinking individual, I was nevertheless at the mercy of the more primitive parts of my brain. Sometimes totally, but pretty much all executive functions were influenced by it to a large degree. That might be fine, but my limbic system tended to make poor decisions; ones that my more conscious brain would have to pay the price for later. It's also no match for the brains of people not in emotional mode, and would be taken advantage of by things like appeals to emotion in advertising, politics, and rhetoric. I decided my internal caveman was not my friend, and took steps to sideline his vote in decision-making.
Could you elaborate on what those steps were?
Once the big reactive emotions (e.g. anger) were dealt with, I turned attention to the more subtle influences. I think there's a middle ground of thoughts that are a more complex or a mix of emotional and rational (think things like national pride, identity, career progression). That's a harder job and a more involved topic. In fact, I can't say I've completely got that done, or even fully mastered the first part. The caveman is always there, of course, and perhaps the best you can hope for is restraining him.
I believe you about better control over how you engage with your emotional responses but damn dude. If you were just getting too mad at stuff they got therapy for that you don't hafta roll your own psychic amputations these days.
CBT being the most popular kind. In CBT you detect negative emotional reasoning, categorise it, and refute it by coming up with a more rational response.
See the pattern?
Learn this lesson young, and you will save yourself decades of squandered time.
Most people never appreciate the degree to which their emotions sabotage their lives.
Being able to view your thoughts and feelings in an abstract, manageable way is incredibly important.
Instead of swimming in your thoughts/emotions all day, meditation teaches you how temporary and fleeting they are. This helps you detach from them and not take your own thoughts so personally (if that makes sense). It's like you have a 50,000 foot view above your thoughts as they come and go.
Don't do meditation to get anything beneficial at all. You do meditation to let go of all of that altogether and (ultimately) prepare yourself for death.
Are you saying it? Because I don't think it's true at all! But I want to wait until someone actually say it before I get into that.
These ideas enter our rational faculties from below.
They are the caveman's goals, and the rational layer of our being is just a means to that end.
I think that the ancestor and related messages imply various false dichotomies of logical+rational versus rich+emotional, problem solving versus experiencing, or a more ambiguous "spectrum". Likewise, you somewhat conflate several: novel versus familiar, pure versus tainted, bright or rich versus dull. These are not clear basis vectors of some abstract space but more confusing and muddled aspects of some perceptual space with an unknown number of dimensions shaped by the first person witness.
In the spirit of the broader topic, I think part of aging and becoming a master of your emotions is to recognize the imprecision and false allure of these metaphors. Ignorance is not bliss; it can be bliss or fear. Novelty is not wonder; it can be wonder or horror. And of course, ignorance or novelty can be boring or desensitizing too! Your state and perspective can drastically change the subjective experience, as can any number of external factors omitted from such trite labels.
The notion of not being able to repeat something is also embedded in how I've seen people, without intending any direct reference to the Thomas Wolfe novel, often use the adage "you can never go home again". I would say most people seem to mean that the observer/traveler has changed and cannot experience home the same way, though of course the place/inhabitants and relationships also change. The whole "home" experience is fleeting or even illusory. Conversely, someone can find "home" wherever they go, if they can establish sufficient conditions. I think Wolfe was aware of all of these factors.
Ironically, emotion as a biological system seems to be all about repetition and heuristics for prompting behaviors given the "same" conditions. And it's not just emotion. So much of perception and cognition is based in an illusion of permanence and identity for abstract concepts. Concepts that don't necessarily exist in the actual chaotic environment within which we are living.
Rational thought is complimentary to emotional thought. Rational thought is slow, reflexive, and highly focused. Emotional thought is affective; it is your mind telling you how something is affecting you.
E.g. Anger tells you some boundary has been violated. It's the rational part that allows you to analyze that feeling and respond appropriately (telling someone to back off or getting a snack because your blood sugars are low)
This practice of self-reflection after anger over the decades has turned into a life where I am very rarely angry, and life is incredibly enjoyable.
Imagine a river. Controlling the river in the way you suggest is like throwing obstacles in the river trying to dam it.
But instead, imagine trying to redirect the river instead. You don't fight the flow, you just move it.
When we're young, we (instinctively, subconsciously) feel like our fucks reserves are plentiful, so we give a fuck about a lot of stuff.
As we get older, our reservoir of fucks gets progressively depleted. The fucks are rarer, so we give a fuck less and less often. I've recently turned 40 and I can definitely feel this in myself; just like recovery from workouts takes a little longer than when I was 20, I don't give a fuck about things so easily.
By the time you're officially old, you're almost out of fucks, so it's not like you don't give a fuck because you don't want to, but because it's more difficult physically (harvesting of the last fucks takes more energy, because biology).
Brb, submitting to Nature.
When you're younger smaller problems seem larger because you've not been desensitised to larger problems. As you progress through life you generally experience greater stress and thus the smaller problems feel smaller. You could look at it like desensitisation to capsicum, salt, violence or pornography.
https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0
Perspective is another other thing.
Once you start to see how the world works, and how complicated things are, you're a lot less likely to fire off about some specific issue.
Radicalism is the posture of those who want to externalize all the side effects of their utopianism, and when you're older it gets harder to not see second-order effects for what they are.
Weirdly, it may take a kind of 'irrational populism' to nudge the needle a few points to just get 'basic change' which is a real paradox.
Hey, I already get half a dozen emails about these in my spam folder every day.
As you get older, you start to see that everything is the same and goes through cycles. The important stuff of my childhood (ex: having clothes that were sewhar fashionable), becomes irrelevant. Who cares if I'm wearing the same style of sandals for over 20 years now? You start to focus on what's more important to you. F** are reserved for important matters like arguing on HN about the superiority of Linux :).
When you see a child have a meltdown over not having their favorite bath towel available, you start to see how widening your scope means less care for minor problems. I have no time to worry about those things as I have bigger problems (working on marriage, work due dates, educating my kid...etc). It makes one wonder how chill an immortal being would be after milennia.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0OI4kah6Rp4
I've watched the show and loved it, and I've heard this compliment before, but only just now have I realized how meta this compliment is.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776 [1] https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
As I often as I remember I adopt the perspective of someone who's 14,000 years old.
I don't know why I haven't died, and at this point I don't expect to at anytime in the future.
But I don't know I won't - so I'm still careful, and grateful.
But I don't let things bother me, because I've seen it before. And all my plans are long-term, because centuries to me are the same as quarters for you.
It seems crazy, but it's really changed how I think. I got the idea after watching the incredible movie, "The Man From Earth"
The Man From Earth is wonderful. The best ultra-low budget movie IMO.
plushpuffin (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132468) mentions Greg Egan's Permutation city, and this sort of question is one of his main themes. In Diaspora, Egan explores many other possible answers; my favourite of the possible answers there, and I suspect also his, is that eventually one would occupy oneself with mathematics in such a place.
> Imagine a place (call it heaven if you want) where time and death don’t exist. What could you possibly care about?
Mathematics!
plushpuffin (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132468) mentions Greg Egan's Permutation City, and this sort of question is one of his main themes. In Diaspora, Egan explores many other possible answers; my favourite of the possible answers there, and I suspect also his, is that eventually one would occupy oneself with mathematics in such a place.
Simply put, if the human lifespan were longer, we might give less fucks about natural disasters because we've seen them before.
I’m splitting hairs, but aren’t these two separate problems?
If I lived 1,000 years, I’m not sure I’d be able to remember things that happened 200 years ago super well. I can’t remember things that happened 20 years ago very well.
Although I kinda personally believe (more on hope than any technology being available) that we can move to a non biological medium with nearly infinite storage, speed of light processing speed, effective immortality...etc. The only needs would be entertainment and energy.
Of course, we have zero idea if that is even possible.
Competition/drama with other immortals? Competition with past selves? Assuming no memory wipes.
Context switches could be annoying, given the ability to tangent across infinite time or space.
I thought you said you were tired of chasing fashions. ;p
Linux has already taken over the world. Your advocacy energy is wasted on it.
Direct it toward promoting Rust instead :)
"Lindsay glanced at one wall and was paralyzed at the sight of his own clan's founder, Malcolm Lindsay. As a child, the dead pioneer's face, leering in ancestral wisdom from the tops of dressers and bookshelves, had filled him with dread. Now he realized with a painful leap of insight how young the man had been. Dead at seventy. The whole habitat had been slammed up in frantic haste by people scarcely more than children. He began laughing hysterically.
'It's a joke!' he shouted. The laughter was melting his head, breaking up a logjam of thought in little stabbing pangs.
[...]
'It's a joke,' Lindsay said. His tongue was loose now and the words gushed free. 'This is unbelievable. These poor fools had no idea. How could they? They were dead before they had a chance to see! What's five years to us, what's ten, a hundred—' "
But generally I agree with the idea that that wisdom collects with time and experiences lived and so emotional expense is better controlled along with aging.
From my experince, at a smillar age (41), I reserve my fucks for more important events so your take on fucks fits me quite well, I generally give a lot less of them.
It can go the other way.
But emotions don't feel as raw/immediate as they used to feel when I was younger.
lol. Well, there you have it.
Perhaps the outrage component advertises breeding potential in young humans, kind of like thick hair.
In the end, it's all bene caca et irrima medicos.
But I wonder, it seems to me doomers lost their fuck faster. Is it because they have fewer initial fucks? Or is it because they lose fuck overtime even if they don't a fuck about something? Or every time everybody else gives a fuck a doomer gives two?
As an aside I feel this is a wonderful anthem for life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0
1. I have got my crippling Generalized Anxiety Disorder under control
2. I have realized that I used to give way too many fucks about shit that didn't matter at all, and it was not worth it and actually detrimental
Mind you, those 2 are highly correlated and of interdependent causation.
What got me here:
Therapy didn't help.
Manson's book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck" helped quite a bit, but was not "the thing".
Articles on "Don't be a victim...." "Don't play the victim...." and similar helped.
What helped immensely is to start blogging daily, and more often than daily, about the events in my life, my thinking, my reactions starting from the points of view that:
A) I am accountable for what happens to me
B) I am 100% wrong when something unpleasant happens to me
And that, in the course of a few month, changed my life in tangible manners.
While I am not a snowflake, I am a special case: I started low, very low; and - IMHO - I have come a long way in the Depression/Anxiety/Being_a_loser scale.
I do believe that to some degree something similar happens to most everyone who doesn't start for the same ultra-low point as me, with time we learn that when young we were wrong to give too many fucks about too many things.
But guess what? Giving way too many fucks about too many things is good for:
Business: Facebook, iPhone & Co
Politicians: from left to right
Religions: all of them (except for The Dude)
And that's why the messagings that we are bombarded with aim at reinforcing giving too many fucks about too many things (aka Anxiety) and the messagings aimed at kids/teenagers aim to create and instill Anxiety.
Mic drop.
> What helped immensely is to start blogging daily, and more often than daily, about the events in my life, my thinking, my reactions starting from the points of view that:
> A) I am accountable for what happens to me
> B) I am 100% wrong when something unpleasant happens to me
> And that, in the course of a few month, changed my life in tangible manners.
And also:
I am reading about Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) specifically:
How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything-yes, Anything!
How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons
A guide to rational Living
For instance, when Anxiety flares up due to some trigger, I might ruminate and have insomnia.
Ever ask why? Well... it's about giving way too many fucks. Shit happened. So? Who's responsible for ruminating and losing sleep? Me, myself and I. 100% my bad. Of course I am not responsible for the event, but I am responsible for letting it make me ruminating / insomniac.
And seeking an external solution like meds, or therapy, or a therapist or whatnot it's just a copout. And if taken to an extreme it might develop into victim mentality and hence a self fulfilling prophecy.
This works for me. I am not blaming any victims out there, at times I have mentioned this personal attitude of mine only to be accused of "blaming victims the world over". NOPE. This is about me.
I am no martyr either, but I see out there, and I was guilty myself, to use as a starting point the stance that I was either right or immune to any finger-pointing. Starting from "I am 100% wrong" is just a different stance, a different starting point. Needs not to be the end of it, the process of reasoning is the journey the leads to bettering oneself.
EDIT: No, really, I do philosophy, it focuses on emotion. I don't deserve downvotes for something I've worked for years on[1].
[1]: http://eristicstest.com/
I wonder what portion of "older people being more emotionally balanced" can be explained by more emotionally balanced people surviving longer in Western society? Sounds like something somebody will have tried to quantify at least in terms of the order of magnitude?
But we sure know how to play all you youngsters, look at BLM and all that horse shit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Basically, it's survivor bias, but literally.
On most things I either know nothing I will do or say will make a positive impact, or I know the issue will take care of itself or someone else is taking care of it, just not right at this very moment. So why bother. I have better things to do with my life. Like lie down on my couch and binge watch Golden Girls.
I make an exception on things endangering the well being of my wife and kids.
Older and wiser? Or older and lazier?
So over time, to stop fucking your own life up, your progressively learn to say less, to hold your tongue, to decide later, to consider things from the perspective of others, to reserve and hold back. To give things time and think before acting or talking. To give people the benefit of the doubt. You earn that things are likely to change so there’s less reason to respond in an extreme manner to right now.
You learn that you’re not as important as you think you were when you were younger.
The first time <insert good thing> happens to you, you might be overwhelmed with excitement and joy. The 85th time, not so much. Hopefully you still appreciate it, but for the same dramatic response, the reward center needs more. Anything that happens to you 85 times isn't special enough to be life-changing, by definition.
The first time <insert bad thing> happens to you, you might be crushed. By the 5th time it happens to you, or you've seen it happen to others, you are just kind of immune. You know bad things happen, and you either decide to move forward or you do not.
Interestingly though: seeing someone else experience the now-banal-to-you positive thing can be it's own reward. Watching a child's first taste of ice cream is somehow magical. Or a puppy's first experience of snow.
And we try to have patience for the corresponding first-negative experiences too. A child who does not get exactly what they wanted for dinner, or who must go home from the park earlier than he or she might like...
(Examples above intentionally light-weight. There are real bad things that happen to people, but the level of emotional energy elicited by the trivialities can be enormous!)
I'm pretty sure the difference between old people and young people is mostly just energy. Old people can't feel intense emotions for the same reason they can't run a marathon. They just get fatigued too easily.
Anecdotally, though much less dramatically: When my Mom switched from glasses to contact lenses (and received an improved prescription), her sense of happiness and wonder at being able to see the details of tree leaves, etc, is something that I still remember a few decades later.
I propose something that neither the article nor anyone else is in the comments so far, which is that we age, our bodies simply get less physical about the emotions. It makes it easier to be more level if your body is literally being more level, and the aforementioned feedback loop is literally weaker. Everything else gets weaker in old age, why not the physiological strength of emotions, too?