
Immortality Begins at Forty - samclemens
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/04/28/immortality-begins-at-forty/
======
dasil003
I'm close to 40, and working in Silicon Valley it makes me feel old every day,
but I'll be damned if I'm ever reduced to this sort of narrow-minded pop-
culturist bullshit mode of thinking.

What does _society_ think of me? I couldn't give less of a fuck. How about
asking what the people around you think of you?

~~~
blazespin
Well, I wish you luck the next time you go looking for VC

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Assuming someone needs or cares about VC because they work in Silicon Valley
is like assuming they belong to a yacht club because they're wearing a polo
shirt.

~~~
cloverich
This makes me wildly curious if anyone has any rough statistics on what
proportion of tech in SF is VC supported. I'm sure its incredibly nuanced and
would be only a ballpark, but it would still be interesting.

------
barrkel
This article is, from my perspective as a 36 year old, a poorly aimed arrow
from a far away location. It isn't even wrong; it didn't start out from
anywhere I recognize.

If you're living in the middle of a sea of what you recognize as cultural
signifiers, and it slowly dawns on you that those cultural signifiers swarm
and bubble around a particular age cohort, I guess the experience of drifting
out of that age cohort can be disorientating.

But I don't even agree with what this chap seems to recognize as culture -
it's mostly froth, mostly commercial pablum - and it never gripped me much.
But I can only guess at this, because he isn't precise enough to define his
terms.

The search for meaning in my life came to me in my late teens, and was over by
the time I was 25. The meaning I found was not derived from the attention or
efforts of other people. I don't expect a decline in marketing of cultural
objects towards me, because I've never been much of a target for cultural
object marketing that was targeted to the 15-40 age cohort.

I don't watch much TV, I don't watch many movies, I don't go to music events,
I don't visit the gym, and I generally feel quite comfortable in life. I don't
feel pressure to try and appear young. I've never got much dating advice
because I never spent much time dating. The world this chap seems to have been
living in (as near as I can tell) is almost unrecognizable to me.

As near as I can tell, the chap has just discovered existential angst. Welcome
to late adolesence, is all I can say.

~~~
blazespin
This might be a bit more compelling if you were > 40\. Most 40 year olds who
are engaged with others en masse probably recognize what this guy is trying to
say.

To change this logic, I think we need to change mass culture. Simply being
more mature in the way you talk about, is nice, but it also means you can't
participate on an even playing ground (again, en masse)

~~~
mappy
I'm over 40 and I didn't understand this post. Maybe someone else can
summarize it.

I think the only dirty secret when it comes to passing 40 as a software
developer is that you become more and more in the minority and notice that
there is a greater percentage of older people looking for work. So- it's a
little scary.

~~~
randallsquared
As an over-40 developer, I haven't really experienced that latter. However, I
_have_ experienced the feeling that I've passed my due-date, culturally, in
more-or-less the way the article describes. People look to me to provide
answers, now, even when I don't know them off the top of my head, and accept
my answers as correct even when I preface them with conditionals and hedging.
I know exactly the feeling that I am now responsible for creating culture for
those under 30.

~~~
barrkel
People have been looking to me to provide professional answers almost since I
started my career - I've historically been the best, or one of the best,
developers everywhere I worked.

Younger people I've known are typically headstrong in the ignorant way of
youth - they can't help it, they don't know what they don't know. I haven't
seen young people pay particular attention to what older people say.

But young people aren't usually very interesting, so not being culturally
relevant to them doesn't really affect me in any way.

------
aub3bhat
I used to really like his writing, especially the series of articles he wrote
about The Office. But these days I find him too insufferable to read. It has
jumped the shark where everything is now how to be meta about being meta. At
the same time I still continue to enjoy reading essays written by Paul Graham
since his words are backed by real experience derived from practice, rather
than philosophizing for just the sake of it.

~~~
chillingeffect
I enjoyed _Tempo_ very much. Haven't read much else by him, but this article
is almost ironically self-unaware in its sweeping generalizations. For a guy
who once wrote that simple 2nd order systems should be considered as weather
systems (coincidentally I was pondering these words all day today!), his
"banded" view on age vis-a-vis "society" is unnuanced. Surely he realizes that
society, including the culture industry, is comprised of people interlocking
at all levels and ages, but this reads like someone who just realized that
older people have capital to invest and younger people have time to burn. V.R.
must surely have put that together earlier?

It's as if to comprehend this essay, your definition of "culture" must be
constrained to "pop music." If he doesn't believe that people >=40 have
meanings manufactured for them, just pick up the NYT for example... The same
with sports cars, fancy homes. Perhaps he's simply out of touch with "stuff
people over 40 like." The entirety of child-raising, college-funding etc. is
all part of culture...

------
joshuak
Wow, this is amazing! Everyone here is reacting exactly the way the OP's
theory would predict. Those under (approximately) 40 rave against the article.
They still have a sense of meaning. Those who are at the apex of 40 are
depressed by it, they still bemone the loss of meaning. Those over 40 and past
the transition like myself find the article to be great and not depressing at
all, just a bit of gallows humor.

Granted it's a young crowd and the young are a noisy bunch, so you expect the
comments to skew towards the dissenting view.

Really fantastic result, and article. Thanks. I found it eminensly helpful.

~~~
joshuak
I'll add...

If you find yourself disagreeing with this article, or depressed by what seems
like a cynical outlook consider this example.

If you are a child who believes in Santa. Would you not rave against a world
in which Santa no longer exists?

If you were a child who just learned or is starting to suspect that Santa does
not exist would you not be depressed about that? Would you not think parents
so cynical to fake all of these stores?

But if you are the parent who already knows these things, it's neither good or
bad, it's just a nice story to tell the kids, and see their eyes light up with
images of elves and winter wonder lands.

This article isn't depressing or cynical. In fact it might be quite the clever
meaning game for the over 40 set, just like Santa Claus is for parents.

... And what is Santa Claus if not a cultural construct of meaning. As the
author says, this isn't a bad thing.

~~~
nzealand
...and if you find yourself trying to explain concepts that took you forty
years to understand... then you probably only recently turned forty. :)

------
seanhandley
What a self indulgent outpouring of sanctimonious and facile drivel.

Mortality sucks, and meaning is a personal journey. I appreciate the urge to
share meaning and truth but anyone who's truly long in the tooth will know
well that the only way to know the path is to walk it.

~~~
coldtea
There's no path -- that's what the article is about.

And that doesn't change whether the journey is personal or collective.

At best one can kid themselves.

~~~
seanhandley
"The path" is a metaphor for the life you lead. We all lead a different life,
we all walk a different path.

Some find meaning, some don't. Some need meaning, some don't.

Some go on the Internet and preach, some don't.

------
chipsy
At 30 I enjoyed this but have a certain criticism in mind. I do recognize that
my frenzied "quest for meaning" is fading a bit as I settle into habit, but
I'm also certain that that doesn't mean that I'm in a better place. I just
have to look at my own parents to know that being too stuck in your ways is
like a state of death manifest in everyday entropy, pardoned by believing that
the entropy is a temporary illness and "normal" will return tomorrow without
urgency.

It is the changes in life that make it lively, and so to live I should strive
to maintain some rate of change in myself, so that I never die while still
alive.

~~~
themartorana
Not too badly said. Not too badly said at all.

For a 30 year old.

(I'm kidding! I actually rather liked your comment.)

~~~
platz
How old are you?

~~~
themartorana
38 in a couple days here. I feel like I'm accelerating to 40, not traveling at
a fixed velocity.

------
davesque
I am surprised and relieved at the abundance of other 35-give-or-take folks
reacting positively to this article. It was a tough read but somehow funny and
true at the same time. As I rapidly approach 40, I find myself going through a
similar series of midlife, nihilistic trends of thinking.

Though I bet the author would disagree (as this piece seems a lot like an
attempt at Explaining Everything -- therefore, how can you refute it?), I
think this kind of thinking is largely driven by unprecedented inequality and
the apparent reality that we are on the brink of destroying the planet.

~~~
themartorana
_" As I rapidly approach 40..."_

Seriously this train needs to slow down. I know people tend to be happiest in
their 60s, 70s, and 80s, but unlike many people, I do live with some regrets
surrounding my 20s, and would like a bit more time in Youngeville. Doubt I can
make up for it all, life is what it has become in many ways, grass is greener
and so on, but yeah... Wish I could be as content as some of the commenters
here.

~~~
rybosome
> but unlike many people, I do live with some regrets surrounding my 20s.

What people are you talking to that don't have regrets from that age?
Accumulating regret is a part of life. I wish that I had been more patient
with others, spent more time with my brother, kissed that girl I met in
Berlin, not worried so much about what others thought...the list is endless,
and I'm still in my late twenties.

------
juped
This article is honestly not the worst way a midlife crisis can express
itself.

------
orlandob
_" People between 40 and Ω (an indeterminate number defined as “really, just
way too old”), are primarily employed as meaning-makers for the under-40 set.
This is because they are mostly good for nothing else, and on average not
valuable enough themselves for society to invest meaning in."_

Deliciously dark.

~~~
mpnordland
Seems like he's over 40 and is inventing another meaning game. No thanks.

~~~
mappy
I don't believe in the concept of a "meaning game". It's not a game.

There really is very little to understanding life's meaning, regardless of
age, despite all the philosophers and theologians still trying to figure out
the details. It comes down to this:

Life is first and foremost about loving everything and everyone. I don't mean
that you have to be happy, but if you show your love through your actions, and
they are not selfish, but you still take care of yourself, then you will have
done all that you can. If you've not been given the ability to interact with
the outside world, that's ok too- you just do the best that you can.

If you have been given the ability to do something that is better than your
other abilities, you should try hard to use that if it shows your love. Your
love may be playing triangle in a death metal band, and that's ok. You may not
always have that ability, and if more people did what they did best for the
benefit of their craft and others, the world could be much more interesting.
You often don't have to quit your job to do it, though quitting is fine also.

If you get to the point where you become less able to do something, don't
dwell on that. Just do the best you can do with what you have. You might fail,
miserably. It's not a guarantee of success, but if you do your best and keep
doing your best, then you'll have few regrets. You may have wasted many years-
it doesn't matter. You may do incredible things through small interactions
with people that no one may ever learn of, because all of us see only a small
fraction of what's really going on. Whatever you do, just don't give up.

~~~
gnaritas
> Life is first and foremost about loving everything and everyone.

For you. The real truth is life has no meaning other than the ones we each
assign ourselves; meaning is entirely subjective and as such there is no one
_answer_ , there's billions of answers.

~~~
mappy
A life without direction is like a car careening down the highway without
anyone driving. Sure, you could do it, but it can be dangerous to yourselves
and others. I've personally been affected by people that have lost direction,
and affected others negatively whenever I've been without direction.

For those seeking a reason to why we exist, there is no better reason than to
love. Trying to get us off of the planet and explore the universe is love.
Taking care of the homeless and hungry is love. Saving some animal species is
love. Having dinner with a neighbor and listening to them tell their stories
is love. Doing your best at your job to help others grow is love. Calling a
family member or friend to see how they are doing is love.

Personally, I believe in loving others and loving my God and trying to do the
best I can with what I have. That's my meaning and that's the real truth for
me, and it could be for a number of people.

~~~
gnaritas
> For those seeking a reason to why we exist, there is no better reason than
> to love.

Again, for YOU. Don't project your desires and need for purpose onto others
and presume we're all like you. YOU think there is no better reason than love,
that doesn't make it true for everyone. YOU have a need to understand why,
some of us have no such need because we recognize the question is invalid,
there is no WHY because that presumes purpose which doesn't exist objectively,
only subjectively. The meaning is always subjective, your reasons are not my
reasons and you're speaking as if it is, as if all people need such things and
that's simply not the case.

My point is, don't tell people what the meaning of life is because you're
going to be wrong; that's YOUR meaning for YOUR life and that's it.

------
maxander
The article's _starting-point_ is spot on- you'll find very little of culture
is aimed at people above an age category loosely defined as "youth." This is
not only a matter of marketing or ageist tropes, its built into the very way
we _think_ about storytelling- characters are designed as stand-ins for the
reader, or as role models, or as representations of forces in the world, all
capitalizing on a reader trying to define their sense of self, their future,
and their place in things. Where are stories for people who have solidified
their ideas about these matters? What would these stories look like? We have
no idea- few or no artists have been brave and inventive enough to go there.

A cynical part of me (though it cannot match the article's author's cynicism,
in the slightest) speculates that the reason culture is geared towards the
under-40 crowd is simply that people above that age have usually had children,
and therefore don't really do much worth telling stories about- and, further,
are focused on individuals below 40 rather than themselves. Perhaps we'll
reach the point that we've raised the concept of youth to such a height that
people will forego even childrearing to hang on to it, and _then_ we'll have
some culture for these emancipated older crowds. It would be nice, I think.

~~~
rhizome
_A cynical part of me (though it cannot match the article 's author's
cynicism, in the slightest) speculates that the reason culture is geared
towards the under-40 crowd is simply that people above that age have usually
had children, and therefore don't really do much worth telling stories about-
and, further, are focused on individuals below 40 rather than themselves._

You're not cynical enough. The reason culture is geared toward those at the
earlier end of a life's average parenting period is that they have more
disposable income and they aren't as experienced in spending it. People in
their 40s (or, should I say, _with a certain level of life experience_ ) are
not as susceptible to advertising, both because they have kids and mortages
and therefore disposable income is a lot more locked down, and because they
often see the advertising coming from a mile away.

Money and manipulation, the one-two punch of commercial fascination.

------
drawkbox
"I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round" from Watching
the Wheels[1] -- John Lennon at 40. He also says he is now "No longer riding
on the Merry-Go-Round". Maybe 40 is when you actually become you, just
watching it spin while you be you. Just do what you want at 40, if you don't
you haven't reached escape velocity from the show.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIB2nkUfeWw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIB2nkUfeWw)

------
lint_roller
You're telling me that all I need to do to build the institution of my dreams
is provide people with a sense of meaning!? LOL.

I do the things I do because I like them and others find at least some of them
valuable, and there's probably a significant chunk of biological determination
behind my enjoyment of those things. And that biological determination is
enough intrinsic value in my "meaning games" to satisfy my existential angst.
I went on this whole meaning search in my early 20s which I'm just completing
and came to similar conclusions, but apparently on a lighter note after going
through my Debbie Downer bouts.

(1) Sunlight and exercise. (2) Friends and good conversation. (3) Women. (4)
Pursuit of goals. (5) Altruism.

Rinse and repeat. Good enough for me. When I'm feeling down, it can be at
least partially attributed to not checking one of the above boxes.

~~~
Garlef
Hm... I never bothered with altruism. Is it really worth it?

~~~
lint_roller
I enjoy people. I started at one of the lower rungs of society and have been
able to do well for myself through a lucky concoction of genes, being born in
the USA, and having the body of human knowledge at my fingertips. Not everyone
is so lucky, and I imagine if I ever come into some serious money that I'll be
using it to level the playing field for others. The effective altruism
movement intrigues me as well.

------
haberman
I've never come across anything that was so effective at being depressing that
I felt weighed down just from skimming it.

------
andyidsinga
This:

    
    
      No, you begin to experience immortality the first time
      you recognize the transience of experiences you thought
      were permanent, and more subtly, the permanence of 
      experiences you hoped were transient.
    

As a thought experiment, pretending to be an immortal (ex vampire), how would
one avoid the trap of permanence of experiences they hoped were transient?

Being 41, my answer is to engage younger folks in search of naive energy and
older folks in search for stories of experiences. I've found optimism in both.

------
habitue
Does anyone feel like taking a stab at explaining in non-poetic form what he
means by "meaning games"?

~~~
davesque
My interpretation is that he's basically calling out all of society as a kind
of consumerism.

The > 40 folks spend most of their time crafting the illusion of a pursuit of
meaning ("Hey, why don't you try my product or my religion or my self-help
book or my investment plan or why don't you sit down and listen to what I have
to say?") The < 40 folks spend most of their time experimenting with or
purchasing or rejecting all the ideas/products that the > 40 folks create.

The author calls them "meaning games" because he asserts that meaning is not
universal truth but more of a cultural trend. So it's a game because you never
actually achieve meaning. You just play the game and constantly think you're
_about_ to achieve meaning. That creates a kind of enthalpy that perpetuates
society.

~~~
adevine
Thank you for your extremely clear, to-the-point tl;dr

------
paniq303
stuff that I can imagine would be unbearable to read with an "everything is
possible" 20 year old mind, but actually quite helpful when you're 35, nearing
your wits end and the exit moves closer than the entrance.

------
dominotw
tldr

" Almost all culture, old or new, is designed for consumption by people under
40"

== people over 40 are free pressures of culture == immortality

Rest of the article is filled with smart sounding incoherent fluff like this

> culture is built around the game of a meaningful search for eternal truths,
> timeless values and changeless habits of prowess.

No. culture is built to improve biological fitness of the population.

This seems to be written by someone who harbored strange and misguided
misconceptions about life, truth, reality and culture and is now realizing all
that he believed in has no value at all.

~~~
LanguageGamer
At the risk of sounding pedantic:

If the statement "culture is built around the game of a meaningful search for
eternal truths, timeless values and changeless habits of prowess" is
incoherent, how are you able to give a definitive, confident reply?

To paraphrase Wittgenstein, something incoherent can't be either true or
false. Personally, I find both of your perspectives on what culture is built
around to be interesting but vague.

~~~
dominotw
Truth is a pathless land[1], but that doesn't stop us from forming our own
truths.

I think my truth is superior because,

Its based on observed reality, eg: cultural taboo's against incest

Has practical applications in the form Evolutionary psychology.

Is internally consistent.

Most importantly doesn't take grim view of culture as something that we are
slaves to, something that can chew us and spit us out after it has no use for
us, something separate from me. The stance that author seems to have taken.

1 - blanking on where I got that from.

~~~
hv23
Krishnamurti

------
pianoben
An excellent example of playing the game he sought to escape.

Isn't it all, from religion to the vague algebra in TFA, just a riff on the
only real question?

...not that I'm above it, either. As a 35-give-or-take person, existential
angst is hitting me more and more frequently. Just seems to be the way things
are.

------
ruricolist
It's not all culture, but US culture, that is designed for people under 40.
(Actually, for people under 30, but it usually takes until 40 to notice it.)

~~~
coldtea
Almost all culture is, or is getting fast, to be US culture, so that's little
consolation.

------
javajosh
_> The grim truth is not that there is no profoundly satisfying answer. The
grim truth is that there is no overwhelming question._

You don't have time to philosophize if your house is burning. If you zoom out
and speed up time, humans are burning the Earth. So the overwhelming question
is this: can we stop ourselves. A related question is this: can we spread life
beyond Earth?

When humans are spread throughout the solar system and under the oceans and
(hopefully) around other solar systems, then let us kick our feet up and ask
these questions (or rather, our descendants). It is a bad decision to
entertain this kind of nihilism - and although I think it's unlikely any
nihilist will have an "aha!" moment reading my words, but it's worth a shot.

------
egypturnash
I'm 45.

I spent most of my life learning to draw and tell stories.

My current project is a TV cartoon pitch. In my wildest dreams, it is the seed
for a long-running SF franchise like Star Trek or Star Wars, that will affect
and inspire people in ways I can't even begin to imagine. In less wild dreams,
where it simply makes it to the screen for a season or three without me having
to compromise the values I'm slipping into it, and it slides a bunch of my
liberal humanist queer values under the radar of a bunch of kids who just want
some cool space adventure.

So yeah. I'm hunting for a certain kind of immortality here.

------
mooreds
Loved it. As someone approaching 40, it was a mind bender that resonated.

~~~
dominotw
Would you mind maybe saying what exactly that you loved ; perhaps in normal
language.

~~~
peteretep
The mild nihilism and the feeling that you're coming up to an age when the
world is no longer all that interested in you.

That's not to sound dark and gloomy - quite the opposite - and I think that's
what many of the younger crowd are missing here.

If you're over 40 and you want the world to pay attention, you need to offer
some greater truth to the under 40s crowd.

I think the core idea that's resonating is that around 40 you're slowly
starting to drift up out of the fray, and having previously been an the center
of the universe, that's an interesting feeling.

------
adamsea
The author lost me at "The only culture designed for people between 40 and Ω
is prescription drug ads and unreadably dense literary novels."

If anything I think things seen by younger people as "unreadably dense" often
unfold once you become older and have life-experience.

If at 40 you haven't found a single piece of music, literature, film, or art
created in the twentieth century which has depth and value to you, then you
haven't really tried.

------
justsumguy
Making judgments about people based on their age is as immature as this
article. It is a tragic generalization of humans probably designed to make the
author feel better about getting older. If it took you till 40 to realize
everything is bullshit then I feel sorry for you. If you think that getting
really old is when you finally get to rest then you're a real moron. You
should be happy now. If you're putting it off or you think there is something
that you just haven't quite learned yet that is going to make some difference
then someone gave you some bad information. Remember when you were a teenager
and you thought you knew everything? Guess what? You did. There are only 2
states of being: Confidence and Not Confidence. You choose it. I hope the
author reads this and pulls his head out of his ass.

------
jrbapna
As the pace of innovation in healthcare continues to increase exponentially,
40 will be the new 30 and eventually the new 20. People who are 40 now might
live to 120. Am I being too optimistic? Probably. But I wouldn't be surprised
if a whole lot of us live a LOT longer than our grandparents did.

~~~
meddlepal
What will be age of retirement in the future is an interesting question. I'm
not sure I want to live to 120 if it means I cannot reasonably retire until
I'm 95.

~~~
jrbapna
It's actually quite possible that AI and machine's will replace a lot jobs by
then and there'll be a basic income guarantee for all. See
[https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-
income](https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income)

~~~
davesque
I sincerely hope that's how such a future would pan out.

------
sridca
> _When your own appetite for meaning is satiated, and you are ready to start
> making meaning games for others. When you’re ready to play god for your own
> amusement._

So what the author is effectively saying is that at a certain age one jumps
(more or less) from being at the _receiving_ end of meaning-games to being at
the _transmitting_ end of it. What the author is reluctant to acknowledge is
the fact that his (ever more abstractly phrased) "appetitive for meaning" has
not ended (via being satiated, for culture-induced meaning by its nature
cannot be satiated), but rather has taken on a new form and position (whilst
still remaining an appetite).

The author, as of now, is as bound to the cultural shackles as his teenage
self. Indeed now he is helping perpetuate the cycle.

------
apatters
I'm 35 and I thought this article was spot on, it sounds a bit nihilist the
way he puts it, but the great upside of this view is that you can pretty much
ignore culture whenever you feel like it. It is after all just the byproduct
of all those meaning games.

I don't think culture is produced only for under 40s, a lot of it targets
families, frightened grannies, and so on. He's right that people tend to fade
out of the public eye as they get older--everyone stops giving a shit about
you unless they have a specific reason to.

I didn't understand the snarky/cynical undertone. When you're young you think
a lot of dumb stuff matters. You eventually realize it doesn't and start to
chill out a bit. Thank god for that, it feels good!

------
orionblastar
Actually TV shows and movies are made for the young, the under 40 people. When
they reboot a movie or comic book it is for the younger generation not the
older that grew up with it.

Immortality comes with a cost like losing teeth, gray hair, wrinkles, you
don't look as good as when you were younger. You might need plastic surgery,
hair dye, or even Sens if it is available to prevent aging.

Businesses want to hire recent college graduates and not 40 or older people
because 20 somethings are strong enough to work extra hours, don't get married
and have kids yet, and can work for less money.

------
alexashka
This guy is an interesting case of a gifted person gone wrong.

He gets to 'I think I'm full of shit', but then bounces right back into
explaining the universe in the most convoluted, wrong, pretentious way.

There is no magic at 40, it is simply that most people have kids by the time
they're 40, and their interests are in seeing their kids succeed - not much
else.

So there's not much left to sell to someone who's 40+ - except better health,
as the author correctly points out.

As for immortality etc - just a bunch of pompous nonsense.

------
blubb-fish
> Creating new meaning means disturbing the universe. By sciencing the shit
> out of it, as we have discussed several times before.

This text is utterly self-indulgent bullshit.

> When you’re ready to play god for your own amusement.

What did this guy smoke

... and why is this in the top 50% of HN?

------
meric

        Winning before making. This is survival.
        Making before beauty. This is perpetuation.
        Beauty before virtue. This is leadership.
        Virtue before truth. This is realism.
    

Here's someone who went through life, learn that all the effort he's invested
into the imageries of society, was all but wasted because those imageries had
no substance, decide to double down on investing creating said imagery for
other people to consume. I've never thought it possible - he's learnt a view
of life, he wrote in four lines, that sounds like this taoist poem[1],
backwards:

    
    
        Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
        When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
        When kindness is lost, there is justice.
        When justice is lost, there is ritual.
        Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty,
            the beginning of confusion.
        Knowledge of the future is only a
            flowery trapping of the Tao.
        It is the beginning of folly.
    
        Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real
             and not what is on the surface,
        On the fruit and not the flower,
        Therefore accept the one and reject the other.
    
    

Where taoists aim to achieve _tranquility_ , this author aims to achieve
_disturbance_. He couldn't have been more correct in his formula.

    
    
        To make your creations endure,
        so they don’t go away when you stop
        believing in them, you may need to do beautiful,
        vicious, and false things.
    

This is the kind of attitude that leads to a person thinking if he could
convince everyone he did a good job, then he did a good job, rather than
focusing on doing a good job and letting people figure it out. He spends so
much effort on appearance, he neglects the truth.

His sense of value is from the attention society gives him before he is 40,
and when that attention runs out, from the money society gives him after 40:

 _you have enough value that society does culture to you_

 _You might conclude from this that if you seek meaning, you will also make
money. This is exactly wrong. You have to make meaning games, which is exactly
the opposite sort of activity._

He thinks because there's no permanence in this world, nothing is of meaning,
and therefore he should invest in creating and consuming imageries, because
only then will society gives him value:

 _You’ve seen too many business cycles, too many political cycles, too many
cultural cycles, too many saints and sinners trading places, to believe that
this time a source of meaning will endure._

But he doesn't realise, it's because everything is transient, everything is
always transforming from one to another, _everything is of value_. He doesn't
realise, economic booms and recession are two sides of the same coin - one
creates the other. He doesn't realise for every winner, there is a loser. For
every saint, there's a sinner[2]. He doesn't realise, it's all the same thing,
changing into one and then another. _This is the universe, making itself, and
everything is part of that process_. And that, is _truth_.

[1]
[http://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu38.html](http://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu38.html)

[2] If there were only saints, would there be saints?

------
ak39
"Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions." ~Cullen
Hightower

------
breakyerself
This was obviously written by an insecure 40 year old. Let's tar and feather
him.

------
tim333
>Almost all culture, old or new, is designed for consumption by people under
40.

I wonder how you would even do that? I mean if I'm writing a book or a movie
or such how can I design it to be consumed by 35 year old but not 45 year olds
given their behaviour is much the same? There must be some trick I'm missing.

~~~
coldtea
The trick is not taking a statement at 100% face value.

He even says "ALMOST ALL". Most records, most movies, most books, most
magazines, etc are for people under 40.

> _how can I design it to be consumed by 35 year old but not 45 year olds
> given their behaviour is much the same_

Again, taking it too literally. You picked two nearby points (+- 5 years) for
your question as if they present a binary, whereas it's more a continuum. A
movie made for 35 year olds will be consumed OK by someone at 40, less ok by
someone at 45, much less by someone at 50, etc.

And that's a film made for 35 year olds -- most films are targeted at even
younger people, and modern Hollywood does most of its blockbusters to sub-20
-- which is evident even in the ages of the stars (given that stars are
typically 10-15 years older than the target audience). That's not even some
dark secret, it's common ad demographics.

~~~
tim333
It was kind of an illustration that it didn't make sense. I mean I can
understand targeting teenagers vs adults but as a 52 year old I watch / read
much the same stuff that I did as a 25 year old. I think the whole thing that
they are targeting under 40s rather than 'adults' is kinda bollocks.

~~~
coldtea
> _It was kind of an illustration that it didn 't make sense. I mean I can
> understand targeting teenagers vs adults but as a 52 year old I watch / read
> much the same stuff that I did as a 25 year old._

Yes, but the difference is, this time it's not made for you. E.g. same way I
could still watch the teletubbies -- even enjoy it and look forward to the
next episode, it doesn't mean it was made with my demographic in mind.

The idea is most movies will show sub-40 people, sub-40 aspirations, sub-40
plots, sub-40 situations, be based on sub-40 concerns, and sub-40 fashion,
etc.

~~~
tim333
Though younger actors doesn't necessarily mean they are making it just for a
younger audience. Old folks with walking sticks would rather see someone fit
play superman than a doddery version.

~~~
coldtea
If it's Superman it's already for a younger audience.

Of course with the infantilization of culture that's difficult for a lot of
people to fathom, and it even needs to be masked a little (that's what causes
the need to have people like Nolan to instill dime-store "darkness" into
superhero movies, which supposedly makes it "deeper", while it's still 10
times as shallow as e.g. "The Searchers").

------
emmab
[https://xkcd.com/167/](https://xkcd.com/167/)

~~~
tehrei
I hope I'll still be able to climb trees when I'm 40.

------
LogicFailsMe
Sure beats being a 30something "leftover" woman in China because China.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_nu](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_nu)

~~~
Roboprog
Shen-gnu - middle age, left over free software???

